The Williams 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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Williams’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,340 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granitic to granodioritic orthogneiss, 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 60×. 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. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.2 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, marble, mica-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 0.5 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 Williams reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Snake, the Saint Croix and the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pepin and Lake Mallalieu 175.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Williams; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
