The Sparta 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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Sparta’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granite undifferentiated, from the Precambrian to Paleozoic.
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 46×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Phyllite, argillite, mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 10 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Precambrian to Paleozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.8 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 Sparta reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Twomile Creek, the Little Ogeechee and the Ogeechee: about 240 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sparta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
