The Garfield 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 80° in 1911.
Garfield’s center stands about 1,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,230 ft to 1,670 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Whitney Mountain, about 1,820 ft, 5 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Boone Formation (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 0.7 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 Garfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Otter Creek, Big Sugar Creek, the Elk River, the Neosho, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,190 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Garfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Garfield has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 47 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Garfield normally reaches 58° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 2025; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.86 in, fell in 1978.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Cassville 1 NE, 18 miles north-northeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
