The Glendale 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Glendale’s center stands about 5,780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,590 ft to 7,020 ft, a difference of 1,430 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Strawberry Point, about 8,990 ft, 10 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and colluvium (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Arenite, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 59 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Middle Jurassic, 164 to 175 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 94 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 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 Glendale reaches the Gulf of California by way of the East Fork Virgin, the Virgin and the Colorado: about 650 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.
290 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Seldom reaches the sea. Dams and canals now take nearly all of the Colorado before its old delta in Mexico.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Glendale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
