The Ponderosa Pine 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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Ponderosa Pine’s center stands about 7,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,170 ft to 7,690 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is South Sandia Peak, about 9,730 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Madera Group (limestone, sandstone, shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granitic, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.7 billion years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 299 to 307 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 0.3 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 Ponderosa Pine reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hells Canyon Wash and the Rio Grande: about 1,560 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 Ponderosa Pine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
