The Oljato-Monument 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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Oljato-Monument Valley’s center stands about 5,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,050 ft to 5,830 ft, a difference of 780 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Point, about 7,960 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Permian to Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks (sandstone, shale, limestone), from the Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 280 to 310 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 11×. 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, limestone. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 280 to 310 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 5 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 Oljato-Monument Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of Oljato Wash and the Colorado: about 950 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, 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 Oljato-Monument Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
