The Columbia 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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Columbia’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 260 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McCabe Mountain, about 620 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ordovician - Precambrian Z Columbia Falls Formation (mafic-volcanic, felsic-volcanic), from the Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 1 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 Columbia reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Trout Brook and the Harrington: about 7 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Columbia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
