The Fort Irwin 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Sunny
Fort Irwin’s center stands about 2,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,350 ft to 3,360 ft, a difference of 1,010 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Alvord Peak, about 3,420 ft, 12 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 7×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Plutonic, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.3 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.
Rain that falls on Fort Irwin runs only a short way, about 4 miles, to the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley. The desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fort Irwin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
