The La Veta 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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La Veta’s center stands about 7,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,820 ft to 7,650 ft, a difference of 830 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Spanish Peaks, about 13,530 ft, 9 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cuchara Fm (sandstone, shale), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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 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.
Conglomerate, sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 0.8 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 La Veta reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cucharas, the Huerfano, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,920 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
940 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of La Veta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
