By: Robert F. Biek, John J. Anderson, Edward G. Sable, and Peter D. Rowley
The Panguitch Lake quadrangle lies in the central part of the Markagunt Plateau in southwest Utah and includes Panguitch Lake, a popular area of summer and winter recreational use. Despite the plateau’s relatively simple structure of a gently east-tilted fault block, the quadrangle contains scenic and instructive exposures of southwest Utah’s youngest basaltic lava flows, classic examples of inverted valleys capped by older lava flows, glacial deposits in the Castle Valley area, and the southern margin of the Markagunt Megabreccia. The Megabreccia is the debris of Utah’s largest catastrophic landslide deposit, which covers 1300 square miles (3400 km²) of the northern and central Markagunt Plateau.
