The Walden 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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−25° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is −23° in 1951.
Walden’s center stands about 8,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 8,000 ft to 8,240 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shipman Mountain, about 10,800 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arkose, conglomerate, shale. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 3 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 Walden reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Michigan, the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,760 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Seminoe Reservoir and Pathfinder Reservoir.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Walden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Walden has a subarctic climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. A normal year brings about 67 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Walden normally reaches 39° and falls to 12°. The record high is 60°, in 1990; the record low −13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.33 in, fell in 1983.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Walden, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
