The Paris 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Paris’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 930 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Spruce Mountain, about 2,410 ft, 11 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Silurian Sangerville Formation, Anasagunticook member (metasandstone), from the Silurian, 434 to 445 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 9×. 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: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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. 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 Paris reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Stony Brook, the Little Androscoggin, the Androscoggin and the Kennebec: about 85 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Paris; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
