The Lowell 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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Lowell’s center stands about 190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 160 ft to 600 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Passadumkeag Mountain, about 1,460 ft, 7 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian undifferentiated pelites and sandstones (slate, sandstone), from the Silurian, 422 to 445 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 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 428 to 459 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Slate, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, felsic-volcanic. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 Lowell reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Passadumkeag and the Penobscot: about 65 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Penobscot.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lowell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
