The Fort Laramie 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; cooler
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
−16° on Nov. 13, 2014, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1989. Next is −11° in 2000.
Fort Laramie’s center stands about 4,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,200 ft to 4,540 ft, a difference of 340 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Garnet Hill, about 5,530 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium and Colluvium (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, hornblende-gneiss, biotite-gneiss. Age: Archean. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Fort Laramie reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,320 river miles.
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 Fort Laramie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fort Laramie has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Fort Laramie normally reaches 53° and falls to 22°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low −13°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.21 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1989 at Old Fort Laramie, 2 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
