The Superior 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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Superior’s center stands about 2,650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,400 ft to 4,040 ft, a difference of 1,640 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mound Mountain, about 6,210 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pliocene to middle Miocene deposits (conglomerate, sandstone), from the Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Miocene, 11 to 38 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Silt, clay. Age: Holocene, less than 10,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Triassic, 248 to 544 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.
