The Gilpin 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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76° on Nov. 14, 1994, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 75° in 1949.
Gilpin’s center stands about 1,120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 750 ft to 1,340 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rich Hill, about 1,290 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glenshaw Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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.
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 Gilpin reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elder Run, the Kiskiminetas, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gilpin; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gilpin has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 44 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gilpin normally reaches 52° and falls to 30°. The record high is 76°, in 1994; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.75 in, fell in 2007.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Ford City 4 S Dam, 6 miles east-northeast, 190 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
