A tertiary silicic cauldron complex at the northern margin of the basin and range province,central Arizona,U.S.A.

The Superior volcanic field occupies approximately 8,000 square kilometers of central Arizona in the zone between the southern Basin and Range Province and the Colorado Plateaus Province. The primary structural elements of an eruptive center in the western part of this field are: 1) volcanic plateau, 2) ring fracture zone, and 3) resurgent caldera core. A northwest trending graben controls the location of three small subsided blocks, the Willow Springs cauldron (2 km diameter), the Black Mesa cauldron (4 km diameter), and the Florence Junction cauldron (8 km diameter), which were centers for rhyolite ash and lava eruption. These late features are superimposed on a much larger volcano-tectonic structure, the Superstition resurgent cauldron which subsided at an earlier stage following the extrusion of quartz latite welded tuff. The history of the volcanic center is as follows: An early ring of dacite domes of up to 900 meters in relief formed a semi-circular are 7 km in diameter on the western margin of the caldera. The last phases of dome building were contemporaneous with the extrusion of a vast quartz latite welded tuff (22.6 m.y.). The plateau formed by the welded tuff collapsed to a maximum depth of 800 meters along a northwest trending graben which is the locus of three small cauldrons. These late cauldrons were the source of rhyolitic magma which produced non-welded ash flows, lava (21 m.y.), and a thick sequence of epiclastic breccias. The rhyolitic volcanism was followed by intrusion of domes and extrusion of glassy lavas (20 m.y.) of quartz latite composition in a 270° are 16 km in diameter concentric to the arc of older dacite domes. Following deposition of the epiclastic breccia and intrusion of the ring fracture dikes was the extrusion of mafic lava (18 m.y.) into low places in the graben. The mafic lava composition ranges from basalt to basanite.