The Social Circle 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.
Social Circle’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Alcovy Mountain, about 1,100 ft, 5 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic Gneiss undifferentiated, from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 55×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 10 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, biotite-gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 0.4 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 Social Circle reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Little River, the Oconee and the Altamaha: about 330 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the Oconee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Social Circle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.