The Morgan Heights 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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Morgan Heights’s center stands about 4,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,260 ft to 4,520 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Judson Hills, about 4,900 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pierre Shale--Upper unit, from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Gravel, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene, less than 0.5 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Morgan Heights reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,280 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Morgan Heights; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
