The Northfield 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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Northfield’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 350 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Harmon Mountain, about 750 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian gabbro/diorite/ultramafic rocks - quartz diorite, from the Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, felsic-volcanic. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Ordovician to Devonian, 359 to 487 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. 4 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 Northfield reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Machias: about 15 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Northfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
