The Low Mountain 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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Low Mountain’s center stands about 6,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,050 ft to 6,810 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Balakai Mesa, about 7,440 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cretaceous sedimentary rocks (sandstone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 88 to 97 million years old.
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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 88 to 97 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, coal. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 88 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 0.9 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 Low Mountain reaches the Gulf of California by way of Tse Chizzi Wash, Polacca Wash, Corn Creek Wash, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 950 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 Low Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
