The Pine Valley 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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Pine Valley’s center stands about 6,540 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,160 ft to 9,270 ft, a difference of 3,110 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Signal Peak, about 10,360 ft, 5 miles south.
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 10 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.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 28 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Oligocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 94 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arenite, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 202 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. 4 smaller units 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 Pine Valley reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Santa Clara, the Virgin and the Colorado: about 620 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 Pine Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
