The Gold Hill Formation has a type section in the Manhattan District of the Toquima Range (Ferguson, 1924).

Sparse trilobite fragments suggest that the Gold Hill Formation is Early Cambrian in age. Although both the top and base of the unit are fault bounded at the type locality, near Summit Spring in the Toiyabe Range the Gold Hill grades upward into the Ordovician Broad Canyon Formation (Kleinhampl and Ziony, 1985).

At its faulted type locality in the Toquima Range, the Gold Hill Formation consists mainly of pink to light-gray quartzite, and lesser amounts of sandstone schistose and phyllitic shale and minor limestone (Ferguson, 1924; Kleinhampl and Ziony, 1985). Nicholson (1978) describes the Gold Hill in the Toquima Range as a lower unit of gray calcareous mudstones and silty mudstones which are locally rippled and commonly metamorphosed to micaceous schists and phyllites and interbedded with quartzite; a middle unit of white to light gray, reddish-brown weathering quartzite and quart arenite; and an upper unit of medium gray, thick-bedded limestone.

In the Lead Mine Canyon area of the Monitor Range, the Gold Hill Formation is a shattered and brecciated pale-pink to brown quartzite with interbedded brownish schistose and phyllitic shale and siltstone (Kleinhampl and Ziony, 1985).

In the Toquima Range, the Gold Hill Formation is about 3,200 to 4,000 feet thick (Nicholson, 1978).

The Gold Hill Formation has been mapped in the Monitor, Toquima and Toiyabe Ranges.

Archaeocyathids, Girvanella-like algae, trilobites and worm burrows suggest that the Gold Hill Formation was deposited in shallow marine shelf environments (Washburn, 1970; Kleinhampl and Ziony, 1985).