The Amargosa Valley 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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Amargosa Valley’s center stands about 2,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,300 ft to 2,440 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pyramid Peak, about 6,630 ft, 13 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium, undifferentiated (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician to Early Devonian, 394 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Middle Devonian, 384 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Paleocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 66 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 Amargosa Valley reaches the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley by way of the Amargosa: about 140 river miles. The desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 100% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Amargosa Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
