The Lake Andrew 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.
Lake Andrew’s center stands about 1,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Tom, about 1,370 ft, 4 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Leucogranite (leucocratic-granitic), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 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 10 mi of the line.
Leucocratic-granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Gabbroic, dioritic. Age: Archean to Paleoproterozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Volcanic, sedimentary, hypabyssal. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gabbro, pyroxenite, diorite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 0.3 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 Lake Andrew reaches the Gulf of America by way of Shakopee Creek, the Chippewa, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Andrew; river miles along the main stem, rounded.