The Reliance 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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63° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 62° in 2016.
Reliance’s center stands about 6,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,330 ft to 7,000 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cabin Butte, about 7,960 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesaverde Group - Rock Springs Formation (sandstone, shale, claystone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. 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, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Oil-shale, marlstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. 4 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 Reliance reaches the Gulf of California by way of Killpecker Creek, Bitter Creek, the Green River and the Colorado: about 1,510 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 Reliance; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Reliance has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 8 inches of water.
On November 14 Reliance normally reaches 41° and falls to 22°. The record high is 61°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.34 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Rock Springs Airport, 9 miles southeast, 240 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
