The El Indio 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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El Indio’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Escondido Formation (black-shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sand. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million 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.
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 El Indio reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cuevas Creek, Saus Creek and the Rio Grande: about 480 river miles.
Lake on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake.
270 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of El Indio; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
