The Boston 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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Boston’s center stands about 210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 250 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Miccosukee Formation (clay, sand, gravel), from the Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Clay, sand, gravel. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sand, clay. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, gravel. Age: Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 3.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Middle Miocene, 12 to 16 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.
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 Boston reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Aucilla: about 75 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Boston; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
