The Goldfield 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.
Chance of showers
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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.
Goldfield’s center stands about 9,920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 9,100 ft to 10,700 ft, a difference of 1,600 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pikes Peak, about 14,100 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
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. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Granite, alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-latite. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 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.
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 Goldfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of North Fork Wilson Creek, Wilson Creek, 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 Goldfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Goldfield 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 Goldfield 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, 12 miles northeast, 860 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
