The Ashland 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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Ashland’s center stands about 1,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cheaha Mountain, about 2,420 ft, 15 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mad Indian Group (biotite-gneiss, mica-schist), from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
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 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 6 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metaconglomerate. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Tonalite, quartz-monzonite, trondhjemite. Age: Middle Devonian to Middle Mississippian, 345 to 387 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, metaclastic. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 2 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 Ashland reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Enitachopco Creek, Hillabee Creek, the Tallapoosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 480 river miles.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ashland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
