The Mammoth 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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Mammoth’s center stands about 3,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,780 ft to 4,140 ft, a difference of 1,360 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Marble Peak, about 7,590 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Middle Miocene to Oligocene sedimentary rocks (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 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.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.4 to 1.4 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 32 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Early Cambrian to Late Mississippian, 330 to 540 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, 50 to 82 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 Mammoth reaches the Gulf of California by way of Tucson Wash, the San Pedro, the Gila and the Colorado: about 490 river miles.
330 miles of the trip are on the Gila.
Often dry. About 60% 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 Mammoth; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
