The Gold Hill 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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Gold Hill’s center stands about 8,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,630 ft to 8,800 ft, a difference of 2,170 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Arapaho Peak, about 13,480 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
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 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. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granitic, dioritic. Age: Late Cretaceous to Middle Eocene, 40 to 72 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite, granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 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 Gold Hill reaches the Gulf of America by way of Left Hand Creek, Saint Vrain Creek, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,390 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gold Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
