The Cordova 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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Cordova’s center stands about 7,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,470 ft to 8,100 ft, a difference of 1,630 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Truchas Peak, about 13,050 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Upper Santa Fe Group (conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 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 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.7 to 1.7 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Cordova reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Quemado, the Santa Cruz and the Rio Grande: about 1,650 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 Cordova; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
