The Orient 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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Orient’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,030 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Red beds (shale), from the Jurassic, 145 to 202 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 33×. 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, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 9 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 Orient reaches Lake Huron by way of the North Branch Chippewa, the Chippewa, the Tittabawassee and the Saginaw: about 150 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
90 miles of the trip are on the Chippewa.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orient; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
