The Fort Defiance 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
Fort Defiance’s center stands about 6,830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,740 ft to 7,480 ft, a difference of 740 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Zilditloi Mountain, about 8,570 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chinle Formation (mudstone), from the Late Triassic, 210 to 230 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 14×. 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, shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 280 to 310 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 94 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 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. 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 Fort Defiance reaches the Gulf of California by way of Black Creek, the Puerco, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,060 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Defiance; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
