The Shiprock 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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Shiprock’s center stands about 4,890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,860 ft to 5,170 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ship Rock, about 6,840 ft, 11 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 90 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 0.5 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 Shiprock reaches the Gulf of California by way of the San Juan and the Colorado: about 1,070 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
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 Shiprock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
