The Pathfork 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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Pathfork’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 3,010 ft, a difference of 1,820 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brush Mountain, about 3,390 ft, 8 miles southwest.
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 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Pathfork reaches the Gulf of America by way of Puckett Creek, the Cumberland, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,700 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 Pathfork; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
