The Tolani Lake 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Tolani Lake’s center stands about 4,940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,860 ft to 5,130 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Kachina Points, about 5,350 ft, 10 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary surficial deposits, undivided (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 180 to 210 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 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 Tolani Lake reaches the Gulf of California by way of Oraibi Wash, Polacca Wash, Corn Creek Wash, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 870 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 Tolani Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
