The Paxton 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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Paxton’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 810 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Albany Shale, Blocher Shale, Sylamore Sandstone, Selmier Shale, Sweetland Creek Shale, Grassy Creek Shale, Saverton Shale, and Louisiana Limestone, from the Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 388 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 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 Paxton reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Fork Vermilion, the Vermilion, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,430 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Paxton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
