The Brian Head 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
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Brian Head’s center stands about 9,810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,450 ft to 11,050 ft, a difference of 2,600 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brian Head, about 11,300 ft, 1 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tertiary volcanic rocks, undivided, from the Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Volcanic. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 94 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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.
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.
A raindrop that lands in Brian Head reaches the Great Basin by way of Parowan Creek: about 16 river miles. The Great Basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Brian Head; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
