The McGaffey 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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McGaffey’s center stands about 7,840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,590 ft to 8,330 ft, a difference of 740 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Rincon, about 8,170 ft, 11 miles southeast.
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 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.
Sandstone, carbonate, evaporite. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 273 to 290 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 284 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Permian, 260 to 290 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 McGaffey reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Rio Nutria, the Zuñi, the Zu¿i, the Little Colorado and the Colorado: about 1,120 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of McGaffey; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
