The Golden 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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−9° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1978. Next is 2° in 1997.
Golden’s center stands about 5,680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,530 ft to 7,490 ft, a difference of 1,960 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santa Fe Mountain, about 10,530 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Denver and Arapahoe Fms (sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate), from the Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 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, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, 56 to 100 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, schist, migmatite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous to Early Triassic, 247 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 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 Golden reaches the Gulf of America by way of Clear Creek, the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,410 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 Golden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Golden has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 62 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1978 at Ralston Reservoir, 5 miles north, 240 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
