The Cotton Valley 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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Cotton Valley’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 300 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Duncan Hill, about 460 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Intermediate Terraces (clay, silt), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Clay, marl. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.5 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 Cotton Valley reaches the Gulf of America by way of French Creek, Dry Creek, the Bayou Dorcheat, Loggy Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 430 river miles.
Lake on the way: Tadpole Lake.
230 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cotton Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
