The Kaka 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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Kaka’s center stands about 2,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,180 ft to 2,570 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cimarron Peak, about 4,070 ft, 7 miles southwest.
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 10×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 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.
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 Kaka reaches the Gulf of California by way of Kaka Wash, Kohatk Wash, Santa Rosa Wash, the Gila and the Colorado: about 430 river miles.
220 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 70% 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 Kaka; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
