The Black Forest 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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Black Forest’s center stands about 7,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,020 ft to 7,690 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ormes Peak, about 9,690 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper part of Dawson Arkose (arkose, conglomerate, shale), from the Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite, alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Arkose, shale, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 0.6 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 Black Forest reaches the Gulf of America by way of East Cherry Creek, Cherry Creek, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,470 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Black Forest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
