The Canjilon 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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Canjilon’s center stands about 7,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,410 ft to 8,520 ft, a difference of 1,110 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Canjilon Mountain, about 10,940 ft, 8 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mancos Shale, from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 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 5×. 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. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 94 to 100 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. 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 Canjilon reaches the Gulf of America by way of Canjilon Creek, the Rio Chama and the Rio Grande: about 1,700 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake, Amistad Reservoir, Elephant Butte Reservoir and Caballo Reservoir.
760 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Canjilon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
