The McKinnon 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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McKinnon’s center stands about 7,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,740 ft to 8,040 ft, a difference of 1,300 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coal Mine Hill, about 9,750 ft, 12 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bridger Formation (sandstone, claystone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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, claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Arenite. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,600 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Early Eocene to Middle Eocene, 38 to 56 million years old. About 0.8 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.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 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. 3 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 McKinnon reaches the Gulf of California by way of the Henrys Fork, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,460 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 McKinnon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
