The Boys Ranch 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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3° on Nov. 17, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is 6° in 2018.
Boys Ranch’s center stands about 3,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,150 ft to 3,470 ft, a difference of 320 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Torrey Peak, about 3,640 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tecovas Formation (siltstone-mudstone), from the Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 208 to 247 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Boys Ranch reaches the Gulf of America by way of Tascosa Creek, the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,580 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
610 miles of the trip are on the Canadian.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Boys Ranch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Boys Ranch has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 19 inches of water.
On November 14 Boys Ranch normally reaches 63° and falls to 31°. The record high is 86°, in 2025; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Boys Ranch, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
