The Hector 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.
Hector’s center stands about 1,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
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 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.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, slate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Leucocratic-granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 0.9 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 Hector reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buffalo Creek, the South Fork Crow, the Crow and the Mississippi: about 1,970 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hector; river miles along the main stem, rounded.