The New Ulm 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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New Ulm’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 790 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fort Hill, about 1,090 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Claystone, siltstone, and sandstone (claystone, siltstone, sandstone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 113 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Middle Cambrian to Cambrian, 487 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Archean to Paleoproterozoic. About 1 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss, migmatite. Age: Paleoarchean to Mesoarchean, 2.8 to 3.6 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.
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 New Ulm reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Cottonwood, the Minnesota 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 New Ulm; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
