The Bitter Springs plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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Bitter Springs’s center stands about 5,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,880 ft to 6,510 ft, a difference of 1,630 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is White Knolls, about 7,260 ft, 13 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moenkopi Formation (sandstone, mudstone), from the Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 230 to 245 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 180 to 210 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 230 to 245 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Bitter Springs reaches the Gulf of California by way of Tanner Wash and the Colorado: about 780 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bitter Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
