The Navajo Mountain 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.
Navajo Mountain’s center stands about 6,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,340 ft to 8,230 ft, a difference of 2,890 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Navajo Mountain, about 10,330 ft, 4 miles west-northwest.
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 3×. 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. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 180 to 210 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 210 to 230 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
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 Navajo Mountain reaches the Gulf of California by way of Piute Creek and the Colorado: about 890 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, 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 Navajo Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.