The Carlin Canyon Formation was named for rocks on the north side of the Humboldt River at Carlin Canyon, in Sections. 13 and 14, T. 33 N., R. 53 E. (Fails, 1960).

The Carlin Canyon Formation is Permian (upper Leonardian to Guadalupian) in age (Fails, 1960). The Carlin Canyon Formation may correlate with the Park City Formation in northeastern Nevada (Fails, 1960).

The Carlin Canyon Formation is composed of yellow-brown quartzose calcisiltites, interbedded with massive beds of brown chert which make up about 20 percent of the section, and thin beds of clean, dense, gray-brown calcisiltite. Chert decreases upward in the section, but overall, the formation has a striped appearance from alternating 6 inch to 8 foot thick chert beds and tan to gray, yellow-brown weathering calcisiltite beds (Fails, 1960). Well preserved gastropods, cephalopods, brachiopods and pelecypods are present in several thin beds within the member.

In the Windermere Hills, the Carlin Canyon Formation is broken into an upper and lower informal member (Oversby, 1972). The lower 1,200 feet of the formation are composed of brown calcareous quartz siltite with medium-bedded calcilutite, calcisiltite and calcarenite which is locally dolomitic and commonly cherty. Quartz-chert arenite and rudite are interbedded in lenses up to 100 feet thick and are common in the lower portion of the unit. Dark brown to black, medium-bedded, blocky chert is interbedded with and locally grades laterally into the limestone (Oversby, 1972). The upper 300 feet are purplish to black irregularly bedded chert which contains brachiopods of Guadalupian age.

The Carlin Canyon Formation is about 1,225 feet thick at the type locality north of Carlin Canyon (Fails, 1960), and it is 1,500 feet thick in the Windermere Hills (Oversby, 1972).

The Carlin Canyon Formation is exposed north of Carlin Canyon and in the Windermere Hills.

The Carlin Canyon Formation represents relatively shallow marine deposition as part of a sequence which overlapped the Roberts Mountains Allochthon.