The Pleasant Ridge 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.
Pleasant Ridge’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 1,970 ft, a difference of 1,490 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Little Bigelow Mountain, about 3,010 ft, 12 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Devonian - Silurian Madrid Formation (quartzite, calc-silicate-rock), from the Silurian to Devonian, 359 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 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.
Quartzite, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Silurian to Devonian, 359 to 445 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Gabbro, ultramafic. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 2 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 Pleasant Ridge reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Kennebec: about 130 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Pleasant Ridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.