The Northfield 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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Northfield’s center stands about 1,040 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 930 ft to 1,150 ft, a difference of 220 ft: 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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million 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 Northfield reaches the Gulf of America by way of Prairie Creek, the Cannon and the Mississippi: about 1,820 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Northfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
