The Gold Key Lake 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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75° on Nov. 16, 1928, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1880. Next is 75° in 1993.
Gold Key Lake’s center stands about 1,390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,500 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Knob, about 2,060 ft, 10 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Long Run and Walcksville Members of Catskill Formation, undivided (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 384 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 Gold Key Lake reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Raymondskill Creek and the Delaware: about 220 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gold Key Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gold Key Lake has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Gold Key Lake normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1880 at Port Jervis, 14 miles east-northeast, 810 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
