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| At the continental divide (Kodak Ektar 25 film, Yashica Electro 35CC camera, polarizing filter) |
Heading east from Gallup, the country is pretty bare, with rock ridges and occasional small farms or ranches. We reach a small community known as Continental Divide. Needless to say, there is a souvenir shop and "Indian Market" on the site. It is a popular stop on I-40. In the parking lot, I spoke to a gent with a Studebaker Avanti - a real Avanti from 1962 or 1963, not one of the versions made later by other companies after the Studebaker factory closed forever in December 1963. He was driving from California to a car show in Florida. A friend hiked some of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail (3100 mi. in total) several years ago and would have passed through the nearby town of
Grants.
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| Is this really the Continental Divide? (Moto G5 digital file) |
A sign explains that water falling west of the sign flows westward towards the Pacific (actually, to the Gulf of California), while east of the sign, water flows to the Gulf of Mexico and eventually reaches the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf Stream oceanic current.
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| Continental divide in the United States. Map from ESRI ArcMap software. |
In the map above, you can see that the Rio Grande river approximately parallels the Continental Divide in New Mexico. At El Paso, Texas, it turns southeast and becomes the border between the United States and Mexico. Much of the water is taken out for agriculture, but a small amount eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico. In central Colorado, runoff flows into the Arkansas River, which joins the Mississippi River a few miles southeast of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. To the west, the Colorado Plateau is highly arid, but what water does fall as snowfall or occasional rain enters the Colorado River. Most of this water is also removed for agriculture, leaving almost nothing for the Gulf of Colorado.
This map (from
Wikipedia) shows the major hydrologic divides in North America. Note how water that falls in the central United States flows to the Gulf of Mexico, much of it via the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The Great Basin is an arid region that has no outlet. Rainfall in the eastern region flows to the Atlantic Ocean via numerous small rivers, none of which even begin to approach the Mississippi River's volume.
