The Thompson Springs 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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Thompson Springs’s center stands about 5,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,880 ft to 6,040 ft, a difference of 1,160 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cottonwood Point, about 8,280 ft, 14 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eolian deposits (sand), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Eocene to Middle Eocene, 38 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Thompson Springs reaches the Gulf of California by way of Thompson Wash, Tenmile Wash, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,110 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 Thompson Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
