The Seligman 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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Seligman’s center stands about 5,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,160 ft to 5,550 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Floyd, about 7,360 ft, 10 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to late Miocene basaltic rocks, from the Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 8 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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt. Age: Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 8 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.8 to 3 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 16 million years old. About 3 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.
Rhyolite, dacite, andesite. Age: Middle Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 12 million years old. About 0.5 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 Seligman reaches the Gulf of California by way of Big Chino Wash, the Verde, the Salt River, the Gila and the Colorado: about 620 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 Seligman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
