The Needham 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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Needham’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 140 ft to 400 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Scott Mountain, about 590 ft, 9 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Claiborne Group; Tallahatta Formation (claystone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 41×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 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.
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 Needham reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Bogueloosa Creek, Okatuppa Creek, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 150 river miles.
80 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Needham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
