The Aspen Springs 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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Aspen Springs’s center stands about 7,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,770 ft to 11,100 ft, a difference of 4,330 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Morgan, about 13,660 ft, 10 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary pyroclastic and volcanic mudflow deposits, unit 2 (Long Valley Caldera) (rhyolite), from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 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 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 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 Aspen Springs reaches Owens Lake by way of Crooked Creek and the Owens: about 140 river miles. Owens Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Lake on the way: Lake Crowley.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Aspen Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
