The Sun City 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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Sun City’s center stands about 1,680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,640 ft to 1,890 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Iron Mountain, about 2,080 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 42×. 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, sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 Sun City reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Medicine Lodge, the Salt Fork Arkansas, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,400 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Great Salt Plains Reservoir, Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sun City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
