The Breen 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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Breen’s center stands about 1,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,040 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Munising Formation (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. 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: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, schist, metasedimentary. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 3.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion 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 Breen reaches Lake Michigan by way of the East Branch Sturgeon, the Sturgeon and the Menominee: about 120 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
85 miles of the trip are on the Menominee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Breen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
