The Fredericksburg 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Fredericksburg’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Smith Hill, about 1,000 ft, 9 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Blue River Group (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 50×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.1 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 Fredericksburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Blue River, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,340 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 Fredericksburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
