The Chugwater 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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Chugwater’s center stands about 5,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,210 ft to 5,640 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maxwell Hill, about 6,650 ft, 11 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 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Claystone, conglomerate. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 31 to 35 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 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 Chugwater reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chugwater Creek, the Laramie, the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,390 river miles.
Lake on the way: 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 Chugwater; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
