The Cedar Hill 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.
Cedar Hill’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Frisco Hill, about 860 ft, 10 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Smithville Dolomite, Powell Dolomite, Cotter Dolomite, Jefferson City Dolomite (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, chert. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Dolostone, sandstone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 0.8 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 Cedar Hill reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Big River, the Meramec and the Mississippi: about 1,190 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cedar Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.