The Waterloo 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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Waterloo’s center stands about 470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wildcat Mountain, about 880 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fort Payne Chert (limestone, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. 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, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, chert, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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.
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 Waterloo reaches the Gulf of America by way of the White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,240 river miles.
Lakes on the way: White Lake (historical) and Pickwick Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waterloo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
