The Bethel 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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Bethel’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 630 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Old Speck Mountain, about 4,180 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian tonalite, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 414 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Bethel reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Alder, the Androscoggin and the Kennebec: about 130 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethel; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
