The Vadito 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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Vadito’s center stands about 7,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,270 ft to 9,290 ft, a difference of 2,020 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Truchas Peak, about 12,980 ft, 15 miles south.
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 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, limestone, dolostone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clastic. Age: Late Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 28 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.7 to 1.7 billion 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. 5 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 Vadito reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Pueblo, Embudo Creek and the Rio Grande: about 1,670 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 Vadito; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
