The Howard 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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Howard’s center stands about 7,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 6,620 ft to 9,710 ft, a difference of 3,090 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cottonwood Peak, about 13,550 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 7 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 Howard reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cherry Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,950 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
1,050 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Howard; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
