The Tecopa 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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Tecopa’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,970 ft, a difference of 780 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Nopah Peak, about 6,320 ft, 14 miles northeast.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite, granite. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 10 to 12 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Middle Devonian, 384 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 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 Tecopa reaches the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley by way of the Amargosa: about 75 river miles. 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.
Often dry. About 100% 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 Tecopa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
