The Central Heights-Midland City 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.
Mostly sunny
Sunny; warmer
Sunny
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Central Heights-Midland City’s center stands about 3,510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,260 ft to 4,220 ft, a difference of 960 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pinal Peak, about 7,820 ft, 8 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to middle Miocene deposits (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Hypabyssal-basalt, gabbro. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic, clastic. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Central Heights-Midland City reaches the Gulf of California by way of Pinal Creek, the Salt River, the Gila and the Colorado: about 450 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 60% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
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 Central Heights-Midland City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
