The Truchas 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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Truchas’s center stands about 7,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,060 ft to 8,610 ft, a difference of 1,550 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Truchas Peak, about 13,050 ft, 11 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, muscovite-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.7 to 1.7 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 Truchas reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cañada los Tanos, the Rio Quemado, the Santa Cruz and the Rio Grande: about 1,650 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 Truchas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
