The McKee 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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McKee’s center stands about 1,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,030 ft to 1,480 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Croley Mountain, about 1,630 ft, 12 miles northwest.
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 22×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 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 McKee reaches the Gulf of America by way of Pigeon Roost Creek, Indian Creek, the Middle Fork Rockcastle, the Rockcastle, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,640 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Bards Lake, Lake Cumberland and Cordell Hull Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of McKee; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
