The Forest 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.
Forest’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,130 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Ordovician (dolostone, sandstone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 0.4 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 Forest reaches the Gulf of America by way of Wolf Creek, the Cannon and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Forest; river miles along the main stem, rounded.