The Big Spring 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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Big Spring’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Negro Hill, about 950 ft, 4 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows St. Peter Sandstone, Everton Formation (dolostone, sandstone, limestone), from the Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Big Spring reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Loutre, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Spring; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
