Lake Mead - looking west toward Bitter Ridge

This view, looking west toward Bitter Ridge, shows the breakwater near the entrance to Overton Beach Marina harbor and the Virgin Mountain in the distance. Late Miocene-age sedimentary rocks crop out along the shoreline. Bitter Ridge is composed of folded and thrust-faulted Paleozoic and Mesozoic-age sedimentary rocks. The Virgin Mountains consist mostly of sedimentary rocks of Paleozoic-age rocks, roughly equivalent to the sequence exposed in the Grand Canyon. The area geology is complex because regional extension of the earth's crust, beginning in Miocene time, resulted in faulting, tilting, and block offsets. This extension was associated with the development of the Southern Basin and Range Province (Faulds and others, 2008).