The Pagosa 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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Pagosa Springs’s center stands about 7,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,030 ft to 7,680 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pagosa Peak, about 12,530 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mancos Shale (shale, sandstone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, conglomerate. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 30 to 35 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 2 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 Pagosa Springs reaches the Gulf of California by way of the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,220 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 Pagosa Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
