The Backus 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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Backus’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,300 ft to 1,500 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Maple Hill, about 1,590 ft, 12 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granite to granodiorite (granite, granodiorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 2 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 Backus reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pine River and the Mississippi: about 2,060 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Pine River Reservoir and Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Backus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
