The Resaca 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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Resaca’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 800 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Johns Mountain, about 1,890 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale, chert. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 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. 3 smaller units 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 Resaca reaches Mobile Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Oostanaula, the Coosa, the Alabama and the Mobile: about 680 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lay Lake.
310 miles of the trip are on the Alabama.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Resaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
