The Ely 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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Ely’s center stands about 1,440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,550 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic metavolcanic rocks (metabasalt, greenstone), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. 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. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Monzonite, quartz-monzonite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Alkalic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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. 6 smaller units 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 Ely reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Shagawa, the Bottle, the Loon, the Rainy, the Winnipeg and the Nelson: about 1,090 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake, Basswood Lake and Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ely; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
