The James Town 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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−15° on Nov. 16, 1955, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is −10° in 1916.
James Town’s center stands about 6,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,080 ft to 6,750 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pilot Butte, about 7,880 ft, 11 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Green River Formation - Laney Member (oil-shale, marlstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Oil-shale, marlstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, marlstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.3 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 James Town reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,490 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Mead, Lake Powell, Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Lake Mohave.
410 miles of the trip are on the Green River.
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 James Town; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
James Town has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 James Town normally reaches 44° and falls to 20°. The record high is 66°, in 2025; the record low −8°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Green River, 4 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
