The Garfield 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.
Garfield’s center stands about 830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 250 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bayport Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 12 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 Garfield reaches Lake Michigan by way of Williams Creek, Butler Creek, Brooks Creek, the Muskegon and the Middle Channel Muskegon: about 30 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Muskegon Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Garfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.