The Brownstown 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.
Brownstown’s center stands about 600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mattoon Formation (shale), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 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.
Shale. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 6 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 Brownstown reaches the Gulf of America by way of Camp Creek, the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi: about 1,230 river miles.
Lake on the way: Carlyle Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Brownstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.