The Cripple 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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−14° on Nov. 14, 1997, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is −10° in 2000.
Cripple Creek’s center stands about 9,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,440 ft to 10,600 ft, a difference of 2,160 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pikes Peak, about 14,100 ft, 10 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Biotitic gneiss, schist, and migmatite (biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 35 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartz-latite. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 0.3 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 Cripple Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Fourmile Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,930 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
1,010 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cripple Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cripple Creek has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 134 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 24 inches of water.
On November 14 Cripple Creek normally reaches 46° and falls to 20°. The record high is 60°, in 2007; the record low −14°, in 1997. The most rain on this date, 0.62 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Ruxton Park, 13 miles east-northeast, 470 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
