The Sipsey 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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Sipsey’s center stands about 430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 540 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hamilton Mountain, about 990 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pottsville Formation (upper part) (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 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 Sipsey reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Burton Creek, the Mulberry Fork, the Black Warrior, the Tombigbee and the Mobile: about 430 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Tombigbee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sipsey; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
