The Golden 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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Golden’s center stands about 560 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pilot Hill, about 800 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eutaw formation (sand, clay), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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 44×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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.
A raindrop that lands in Golden reaches the Gulf of America by way of Epps Branch, Bear Creek, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,280 river miles.
Lakes on the way: White Lake (historical) and Pickwick Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Golden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
