The Lake Valley 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers; cooler
Lake Valley’s center stands about 5,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,840 ft to 6,180 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is South Mesa, about 6,760 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Menefee Formation (mudstone, shale, sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone, shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 24 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 Lake Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of Kim-me-ni-oli Wash, the Chaco, the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,170 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
