The Union 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.
Union’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Circle Hill, about 710 ft, 10 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Zilpha formation and Winona formation (clay, sand), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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 64×. 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: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Claystone, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marl, sand. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 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 Union reaches the Gulf of America by way of Chunky Creek, the Chunky, the Chickasawhay, the Pascagoula and the West Pascagoula: about 290 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Chickasawhay.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Union; river miles along the main stem, rounded.