The Sparland 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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Sparland’s center stands about 550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country.
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 47×. 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, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 0.6 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 Sparland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Peoria Lake, the Illinois and the Mississippi: about 1,380 river miles.
Lake on the way: Peoria Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sparland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
