The Palmer Lake 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
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Palmer Lake’s center stands about 7,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,960 ft to 8,800 ft, a difference of 1,840 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ormes Peak, about 9,690 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper part of Dawson Arkose (arkose, conglomerate, shale), from the Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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, alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, 0.2 to 1.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 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 Palmer Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Monument Creek, Fountain Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,940 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Palmer Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
