The Anton Chico 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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Anton Chico’s center stands about 5,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,150 ft to 5,680 ft, a difference of 530 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mesa Apache, about 6,790 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Santa Rosa Formation (sandstone, conglomerate-sandstone), from the Late Triassic, 227 to 237 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Late Triassic, 227 to 237 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Arenite, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 0.5 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 Anton Chico reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pecos and the Rio Grande: about 1,450 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake, Amistad Reservoir, Red Bluff Reservoir and Lake McMillan.
410 miles of the trip are on the Pecos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Anton Chico; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
