The Pelican Lake 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.
Pelican Lake’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 1,320 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Inspiration Peak, about 1,720 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Schist of sedimentary protolith, 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 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Gabbro, peridotite, pyroxenite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Archean. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 0.6 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 Pelican Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Pomme de Terre, the Minnesota and the Mississippi: about 2,220 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 Pelican Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.