The Lake Montezuma 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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11° on Nov. 17, 1958, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 14° in 1950.
Lake Montezuma’s center stands about 3,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,280 ft to 3,950 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Apache Maid Mountain, about 7,290 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to middle Miocene deposits (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 280 to 310 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 270 to 280 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 8 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. 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 Lake Montezuma reaches the Gulf of California by way of Beaver Creek, the Verde, the Salt River, the Gila and the Colorado: about 500 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 50% 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 Lake Montezuma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Montezuma has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 101° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lake Montezuma normally reaches 70° and falls to 32°. The record high is 83°, in 1990; the record low 20°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Montezuma Castle National Monument, 4 miles west-southwest, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
