The La Paz 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.
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La Paz Valley’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 1,180 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mesa, about 3,630 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary surficial deposits, undivided (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 160 to 200 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arenite, conglomerate. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 80 to 160 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Volcanic, clastic. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 La Paz Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of French Creek and the Colorado: about 260 river miles.
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 La Paz Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
