The Willow Canyon plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Willow Canyon’s center stands about 6,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,020 ft to 8,290 ft, a difference of 3,270 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Lemmon, about 9,150 ft, 6 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Early Tertiary to Late Cretaceous muscovite-bearing granitic rocks (granite), from the Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 80 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 80 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Middle Miocene, 15 to 1,800 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 700 to 1,300 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Early Cambrian to Late Mississippian, 330 to 540 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
