The Ripley 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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Ripley’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wicker Mountain, about 760 ft, 4 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Clayton formation (limestone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 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 62×. 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: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Chalk, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 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 Ripley reaches the Gulf of America by way of Town Creek, South Tippah Creek, the Tippah, the Little Tallahatchie, the Tallahatchie, the Yazoo and the Mississippi: about 820 river miles.
450 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ripley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
