The Preston 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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Preston’s center stands about 5,640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,550 ft to 5,820 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ward Mountain, about 10,900 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
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 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, limestone, shale. Age: Late Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 273 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sedimentary. Age: Late Cretaceous to Early Oligocene, 28 to 100 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. 4 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 Preston reaches the Gulf of California by way of Jakes Wash, the White River, Pahranagat Creek, Pahranagat Wash, the Muddy and the Colorado: about 720 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 Preston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
