The West Blocton 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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West Blocton’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 650 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sand Mountain, about 780 ft, 9 miles north-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 12 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 12 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Black-shale, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 West Blocton reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Hill Creek, Caffee Creek, the Cahaba, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 350 river miles.
200 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Blocton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
