The Questa 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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Questa’s center stands about 7,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,270 ft to 9,760 ft, a difference of 2,490 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wheeler Peak, about 13,120 ft, 14 miles southeast.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 24 to 29 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 24 to 30 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.8 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. 4 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 Questa reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Red River and the Rio Grande: about 1,700 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 Questa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
