Stratigraphy, structure, and geologic history of the Lunar Lake Caldera of northern Nye County, Nevada

The Lunar Lake caldera is in northern Nye County, Nev., about 70 mi (110 km) east-northeast of Tonopah. It is the youngest caldera in the central Nevada multiple-caldron complex and the source of the tuff of Lunar Cuesta, a multiple-flow simple cooling unit of quarts latitic welded tuff that is about 25 m.y. old. The tuff was distributed over an area of nearly 3,000 mi² (7,770 km² ) and has a volume of approximately 90 mi³ (375 km³ ). The Lunar Lake caldera is the site of the Lunar Crater basalt field which contains basalts of Pleistocene and probably Holocene age. These basalts were fed from northeast-trending fissures that had much earlier served as vents for ash-flow tuffs and lavas, possibly including the tuff of Lunar Cuesta.