The Scottsburg 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.
Scottsburg’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 620 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Silver Hills, about 1,030 ft, 9 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New Albany Shale (black-shale), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 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 Scottsburg reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Stucker Ditch, the Muscatatuck, the East Fork White, the White River, Big Bayou, the Wabash River Old Channel, the Old Channel Wabash, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,400 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 Scottsburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.