The El Capitan 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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El Capitan’s center stands about 4,760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,870 ft to 6,460 ft, a difference of 2,590 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pinal Peak, about 7,820 ft, 4 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle Proterozoic granitic rocks (granite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old.
The section below crosses 9 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.
Granite, granodiorite, tonalite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, quartzite. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 700 to 1,300 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 280 to 310 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 El Capitan reaches the Gulf of California by way of Silver Creek, Dripping Spring Wash, the Gila and the Colorado: about 480 river miles.
340 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 El Capitan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
