The Cave 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.
Cave’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 690 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Osagean Series (limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 52×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.3 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 Cave reaches the Gulf of America by way of the West Fork Cuivre, the Cuivre and the Mississippi: about 1,250 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cave; river miles along the main stem, rounded.