The Zapata 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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Zapata’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mogotes Hill, about 560 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Laredo Formation (sandstone, claystone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 0.3 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 Zapata reaches the Gulf of America by way of Paz Ramirez Lake and the Rio Grande: about 300 river miles.
Lake on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Zapata; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
