The Norristown 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.
Norristown’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 340 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Neogene undifferentiated (sandstone, claystone), from the Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Tertiary Neogene, 2.6 to 23 million years old. About 24 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.3 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 Norristown reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Ohoopee and the Altamaha: about 160 river miles.
90 miles of the trip are on the Altamaha.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Norristown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.