The Cortez 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2005, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 72° in 1973.
Cortez’s center stands about 6,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,900 ft to 6,270 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ute Peak, about 9,960 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian deposits (sand, silt), from the Quaternary, 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.
Sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic, dioritic. Age: Late Cretaceous to Middle Eocene, 40 to 72 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Cortez reaches the Gulf of California by way of McElmo Creek, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,070 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 Cortez; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cortez has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 33 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Cortez normally reaches 55° and falls to 26°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low 6°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1962.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Cortez, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
