The Glenwood Springs 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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Glenwood Springs’s center stands about 5,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,720 ft to 8,960 ft, a difference of 3,240 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is White River Plateau, about 11,370 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 16 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.
Limestone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, arkose. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 10 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 Glenwood Springs reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Colorado: about 1,250 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 Glenwood Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
