The Alpine 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.
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy; cooler
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Alpine’s center stands about 4,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,340 ft to 4,770 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Mountains, about 6,880 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial fan deposits (coarse-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 10×. 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. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Trachyte. Age: Early Oligocene, 28 to 34 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 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. 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 Alpine reaches the Gulf of America by way of Alpine Creek, Musquiz Creek, Paisano Creek, the Pecos and the Rio Grande: about 1,020 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
300 miles of the trip are on the Pecos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alpine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
