The Gold Canyon 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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32° on Nov. 15, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1987. Next is 32° in 2015.
Gold Canyon’s center stands about 1,790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,640 ft to 2,170 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is La Barge Mountain, about 5,040 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 3 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.
Gold Canyon has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 105° in July; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gold Canyon normally reaches 76° and falls to 50°. The record high is 91°, in 1999; the record low 34°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.62 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1987 at Apache Junction 5 NE, 7 miles north, 280 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
