The Darling 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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Darling’s center stands about 1,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,140 ft to 1,260 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tower Hill, about 1,500 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Little Falls Formation (schist, slate), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 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 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Siltstone, graywacke, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 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.
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 Darling reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Little Elk and the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Darling; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
