The Montello 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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Montello’s center stands about 4,890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,820 ft to 5,210 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Murdock Mountain, about 8,240 ft, 9 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Playa, lake bed, and flood plain deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Permian, 260 to 299 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone, conglomerate. Age: Early Triassic to Middle Triassic, 237 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 16 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Montello reaches the Great Basin by way of Loray Wash, Thousand Springs Creek and Grouse Creek: about 50 river miles. The Great Basin 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 Montello; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
