The Cathedral 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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Cathedral’s center stands about 8,910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,780 ft to 11,030 ft, a difference of 2,250 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Luis Peak, about 13,950 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pre-ash-flow andesitic lavas, breccias, tuffs, and conglomerates (andesite), from the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 35 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 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Volcanic. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Quartz-latite. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 35 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
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 0.7 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 Cathedral reaches the Gulf of California by way of Spring Creek, Cebolla Creek, the Gunnison and the Colorado: about 1,320 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cathedral; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
