The Eureka Springs 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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Eureka Springs’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 1,660 ft, a difference of 600 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Anderson Mountain, about 1,840 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chattanooga Shale (Lower Mississippian and Upper Devonian), Clifty Limestone (Middle Devonian), and Penters Chert (Lower Devonian) (shale, limestone, dolostone), from the Early Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 24×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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.
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 Eureka Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of Leatherwood Creek, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,200 river miles.
Lake on the way: Table Rock Lake.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Eureka Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
