The West 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.
West Paris’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 460 ft to 1,310 ft, a difference of 850 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Spruce Mountain, about 2,410 ft, 6 miles north.
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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 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.
Granite. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 359 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 West Paris reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Moose Pond Brook, the Little Androscoggin, the Androscoggin and the Kennebec: about 95 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Paris; river miles along the main stem, rounded.