The Magnolia 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.
Magnolia’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 910 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Frenchman Knob, about 1,170 ft, 9 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis Limestones, undivided, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.4 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 Magnolia reaches the Gulf of America by way of Walters Creek, the South Fork Nolin, the Nolin, the Green River, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,460 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 Magnolia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.