The Summit 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.
Summit’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,340 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foliated to gneissic tonalite, granodiorite, and diorite (tonalite, granodiorite, diorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Metabasalt, greenstone. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 1 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.
Summit straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the north side runs to Hudson Bay; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buck Lake and the Mississippi: about 2,260 river miles. One that lands on the north side reaches Hudson Bay by way of Spring Creek, the Blackduck, the Red Lake, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,190 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Sugar Lake, Buck Lake and 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 Summit; river miles along the main stem, rounded.