The Whitecone 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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Whitecone’s center stands about 6,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,000 ft to 6,560 ft, a difference of 560 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hauke Mesa, about 6,810 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to middle Miocene deposits (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 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 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 180 to 210 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, coal. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 88 million years old. About 0.9 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 Whitecone reaches the Gulf of California by way of Ha-whi-yalin Wash, Jeddito Wash, Corn Creek Wash, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 920 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 Whitecone; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
