The Blue Ridge 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.
Sunny
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Blue Ridge’s center stands about 1,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,560 ft to 2,220 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Frog Mountain, about 4,190 ft, 15 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mica Schist (mica-schist), from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mica-schist, gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Biotite-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 5 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Precambrian. About 4 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist, quartzite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke, mica-schist, calc-silicate-gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 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 Blue Ridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dry Creek, the Toccoa, the Ocoee, the Hiwassee, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,600 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Blue Ridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
