The Coal Creek 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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−7° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is −6° in 1916.
Coal Creek’s center stands about 5,370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,160 ft to 5,930 ft, a difference of 770 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hardscrabble Mountain, about 10,360 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Vermejo Fm and Trinidad Sandstone (shale, sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 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.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Arkose, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. 4 smaller units 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 Coal Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Coal Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,900 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
1,000 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Coal Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Coal Creek has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 14 inches of water.
On November 14 Coal Creek normally reaches 58° and falls to 27°. The record high is 81°, in 1918; the record low −4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.63 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Canon City, 8 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
