The Independence 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Independence’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cedar Valley Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 388 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 447 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 431 to 440 million years old. About 0.5 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 Independence reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Wapsipinicon and the Mississippi: about 1,640 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Independence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
