The Fort Valley 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Fort Valley’s center stands about 8,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,480 ft to 10,710 ft, a difference of 3,230 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Francisco Mountain, about 12,570 ft, 4 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Holocene to middle Pliocene volcanic rocks (rhyolite, dacite, andesite), from the Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 4 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 4 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite, andesite. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 4 million years old. About 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.
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 Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of Sinclair Wash, San Francisco Wash, Canyon Diablo Wash, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 920 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 Fort Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
