The Reno 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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Reno’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 580 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Blossom Sand (sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 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.
Marlstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Black-shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.7 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 Reno reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Sandy Creek, the North Sulphur, the Sulphur, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 660 river miles.
Lake on the way: Wright Patman Lake.
320 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Reno; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
