The Blackey 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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Blackey’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,920 ft, a difference of 910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Halls Butt, about 3,070 ft, 12 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Breathitt Formation, lower part (shale, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 8×. 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, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 299 to 422 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Blackey reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Kentucky, the Kentucky, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,790 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 Blackey; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
