The Columbia Falls 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 Falls’s center stands about 120 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 350 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tug Mountain, about 700 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Volcanic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Alkali-feldspar-granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, felsic-volcanic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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. 3 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 Columbia Falls reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Marst Brook, the Little River and the Pleasant: about 18 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Columbia Falls; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
