The Montezuma 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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Montezuma’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Providence Sand, from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
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 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: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 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. 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 Montezuma reaches the Gulf of America by way of Beaver Creek, the Flint and the Apalachicola: about 280 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Flint.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Montezuma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
