The Topaz 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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Topaz’s center stands about 5,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,990 ft to 7,480 ft, a difference of 2,490 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lost Cannon Peak, about 11,020 ft, 15 miles south.
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 7 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, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Triassic to Jurassic, 145 to 252 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Topaz reaches Walker Lake by way of the West Walker and the Walker: about 110 river miles. Walker Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
55 miles of the trip are on the Walker.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Topaz; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
