The Pie Town 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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Pie Town’s center stands about 7,770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,420 ft to 7,900 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Alegres Mountain, about 10,190 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paleogene sedimentary units (conglomerate, sandstone, shale), from the Tertiary Paleogene, 23 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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, shale. Age: Tertiary Paleogene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Clastic, unconsolidated. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 3.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 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.
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 Pie Town reaches the Gulf of California by way of San Ignacio Creek, Rito Creek, Largo Creek, Carrizo Wash, 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 Little 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 Pie Town; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
