The Spofford 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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Spofford’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 940 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Las Moras Mountain, about 1,680 ft, 13 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Uvalde Gravel, from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Marlstone, chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 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 Spofford reaches the Gulf of America by way of Imperialist Creek, Elm Creek and the Rio Grande: about 540 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 Spofford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
