The Balmorhea 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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Balmorhea’s center stands about 3,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,090 ft to 3,310 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Star Mountain, about 6,340 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (fine-detrital, coarse-detrital), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Boulders. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Trachyte, rhyolite. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Trachyte. Age: Early Oligocene, 28 to 34 million years old. About 0.5 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 Balmorhea reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sandia Creek, Toyah Creek, the Pecos and the Rio Grande: about 990 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
320 miles of the trip are on the Pecos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Balmorhea; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
