The Marfa 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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Marfa’s center stands about 4,700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,620 ft to 4,870 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Twin Mountains, about 6,880 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Oligocene, 28 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Trachyte. Age: Early Oligocene, 28 to 34 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 0.6 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 Marfa reaches the Gulf of America by way of Alamito Creek and the Rio Grande: about 1,030 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
350 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Marfa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
