McNulty rhyolite

McNulty rhyolite is one of four intrusive, igneous geological formations, the Chalk Mountain nevadite, Lincoln porphyry, McNulty rhyolite and Quail porphyry, described, mapped, and named by S. F. Emmons[1] in 1898 within the Tenmile Mining District of southern Summit County, Colorado. The McNulty rhyolite, which is also known as the McNulty Gulch rhyolite,[2][3] is described by S. F. Emmons as a fine-grained porphyritic rhyolite that is light gray in color and contains many small white feldspars and locally some small smoky quartz crystals. He mapped it as being exposed as small irregular masses in McNulty Gulch and southward beyond the area of the Tenmile Mining District that was mapped at the time. One exposure above the Railroad Boy tunnel, his location 45 in McNulty Gulch, exhibited small drusy cavities containing little tablets of tridymite. He proposed that this rhyolite was either intruded contemporaneously withy or later than the Chalk Mountain nevadite at the time of eruption. Based on field mapping, the McNulty rhyolite was interpreted to cross-cut and post-date the Lincoln and the Quail porphyries.[1] Later geologic mapping in the Tenmile Mining District eliminated the McNulty rhyolite as a recognized geologic formation.

In later geologic mapping of the McNuly Gulch - Ten Mile Mining District region, both Butler and others[4] and Bergendahl and Koschmann[5] interpret what was previously mapped by S. F. Emmons as the Lincoln porphyry, McNulty rhyolite and Quail porphyry as a single layer of igneous rock that they map as the Lincoln porphyry. This layer is interpreted as an igneous sill that has intruded between sedimentary layers composing the Minturn Formation. Although the original exposures of McNulty rhyolite are now largely buried by mine waste from the Climax Mine, the remaining exposures are now mapped as Quartz monzonite porphyry - megacrystic variety (Eocene).[6]

According to the geologic mapping and interpretations of Widmann and others,[6] their unnamed quartz monzonite porphyry typically consists of light-gray to light bluish-gray quartz monzonite porphyry. It contains large phenocrysts (megacrysts) of orthoclase and in many places, rounded bipyramids of quartz. These phenocrysts are surrounded by a porphyritic matrix of grains of plagioclase, quartz, orthoclase, and abundant biotite and a bluish-gray aphanitic matrix. This quartz monzonite porphyry, which includes the former McNuly rhyolite, was formerly correlated with the Lincoln porphyry based on similarity of appearance. However, radiometric ages obtained from the Lincoln and quartz monzonite porphyries and accompanying field relations indicate that the Lincoln porphyry (66 to 67 million years old) is in fact much older than the quartz monzonite porphyry (42 to 43 million years old).[6]

  1. ^ a b Emmons, S. F., 1898. Description of the Tenmile district quadrangle, Colorado. U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Atlas, Folio 48, 6 p. United States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia.
  2. ^ Cross, W., 1886. Petrography. in Emmons, S. F., p.319-362, Geology and mining industry of Leadville, Colorado. U.S. Geological Survey Monograph 12. United States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. 770 p.
  3. ^ Wilmarth, M.G. 1938. Lexicon of Geological Names of the United States (Including Alaska) Part 2 M-Z. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 896. United States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. 1152 p.
  4. ^ Butler, B.S., Vanderwilt, J.W. and Henderson, C.W., 1933. The Climax molybdenum deposit, Colorado. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 846C. United States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. 43 p.
  5. ^ Bergendahl, M.H., and Koschmann, A.H., 1971. Ore deposits of the Kokomo-Tenmile district, Colorado. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 652, 53 p.
  6. ^ a b c Widmann, B.L., Bartos, P.J., McCalpin, J.P. and Jackson, J., 2004. Geologic Map of the Copper Mountain Quadrangle; Summit, Eagle, Lake and Park Counties, Colorado. Colorado Geological Survey, Open-File Report 03-20. scale 1:24,000.