The Elephant Head 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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14° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 18° in 1958.
Elephant Head’s center stands about 3,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,920 ft to 3,500 ft, a difference of 580 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Wrightson, about 9,340 ft, 10 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Early Pleistocene to latest Pliocene surficial deposits (gravel, sand), from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million 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 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 160 to 200 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 82 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 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.
Elephant Head has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in June; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Elephant Head normally reaches 72° and falls to 39°. The record high is 89°, in 1967; the record low 24°, in 1961. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Tumacacori Nm, 14 miles south-southwest, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
