The Gaylesville 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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Gaylesville’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Brandon, about 1,690 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Floyd Shale, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 19×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 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. 8 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 Gaylesville reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 600 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lay Lake.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gaylesville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
