The Watersmeet 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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Watersmeet’s center stands about 1,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 1,830 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Military Hill, about 1,890 ft, 15 miles south-southeast.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, amphibolite, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Neoarchean, 2.5 to 3.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mixed-clastic, metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Banded-iron-formation. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Watersmeet reaches Lake Superior by way of the Middle Branch Ontonagon and the Ontonagon: about 80 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
55 miles of the trip are on the Middle Branch Ontonagon.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watersmeet; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
