The Branson 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.
Chance of showers
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Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
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Mostly sunny
Branson’s center stands about 6,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,960 ft to 7,050 ft, a difference of 1,090 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Kelleher Mesa, about 7,560 ft, 11 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carlile Shale, Greenhorn Limestone, and Graneros Shale (shale, limestone), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Branson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bachicha Creek, Chacuaco Creek, the Purgatoire, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,870 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
850 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Branson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
