The Vandalia 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
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Vandalia’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dean Hills, about 740 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bond Formation (shale, sandstone, limestone), from the Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old.
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, sandstone, limestone. Age: Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 307 million years old. About 24 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 Vandalia reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Kaskaskia and the Mississippi: about 1,220 river miles.
Lake on the way: Carlyle Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Vandalia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
