The Haystack 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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Haystack’s center stands about 7,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,760 ft to 7,600 ft, a difference of 840 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Salitre Mesa, about 8,620 ft, 13 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Morrison Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. 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, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 90 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Permian, 260 to 290 million years old. About 5 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, limestone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 million 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. 6 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 Haystack reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio San Jose, the Rio Puerco and the Rio Grande: about 1,660 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 Haystack; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
