The Blue Diamond 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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Blue Diamond’s center stands about 3,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,150 ft to 4,650 ft, a difference of 1,500 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Potosi Mountain, about 8,460 ft, 8 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 9 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone, conglomerate. Age: Early Triassic to Middle Triassic, 237 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Permian, 260 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, limestone. Age: Permian, 273 to 299 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. 3 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 Blue Diamond reaches the Gulf of California by way of Tropicana Wash, Flamingo Wash, Las Vegas Wash and the Colorado: about 490 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, 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 Blue Diamond; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
