The Ponce de Leon 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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Ponce de Leon’s center stands about 90 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 60 ft to 200 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hudson Hill, about 330 ft, 9 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alum Bluff Group (sand, clay), from the Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 16 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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, clay. Age: Middle Miocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 16 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 3.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Ponce de Leon reaches Choctawhatchee Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Sandy Creek and the Choctawhatchee: about 50 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ponce de Leon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
