The Rough Rock 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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Rough Rock’s center stands about 6,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,940 ft to 7,950 ft, a difference of 2,010 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rain Mountain, about 7,770 ft, 11 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Morrison Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Jurassic, 145 to 160 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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, coal. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 88 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 160 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 160 to 180 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 88 to 97 million years old. About 2 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 Rough Rock reaches the Gulf of California by way of Chinle Wash, Chinle Creek, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,090 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 Rough Rock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
