The Pitkin 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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61° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 59° in 1980.
Pitkin’s center stands about 9,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 9,070 ft to 11,290 ft, a difference of 2,220 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Shavano, about 14,170 ft, 15 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Minturn and Belden Fms (sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mafic-hypabyssal, felsic-hypabyssal. Age: Eocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 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. 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 Pitkin reaches the Gulf of California by way of Quartz Creek, Tomichi Creek, the Gunnison and the Colorado: about 1,340 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 Pitkin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pitkin has a subarctic climate. Summer afternoons average 72° in July; winter nights fall to about −8° in January. About 19 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pitkin normally reaches 40° and falls to 14°. The record high is 61°, in 1999; the record low −15°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Taylor Park, 15 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
