The Central 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.
Central City’s center stands about 430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 380 ft to 560 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tooley Hill, about 700 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt), 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 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.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 Central City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Cypress Creek, Cypress Creek, the Green River, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,250 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 Central City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.