The Centennial 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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Centennial’s center stands about 8,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,810 ft to 9,750 ft, a difference of 1,940 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Medicine Bow Peak, about 11,950 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, boulders. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, amphibole-schist, quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite, pelitic-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Permian to Early Triassic, 247 to 299 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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. 7 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 Centennial reaches the Gulf of America by way of Kelly Creek, the Little Laramie, the Laramie, the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,510 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Wheatland Reservoir Number 2 and Grayrocks Reservoir.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Centennial; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
