The Big Timber 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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Big Timber’s center stands about 4,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,990 ft to 4,480 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Raspberry Butte, about 6,630 ft, 14 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 72 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Big Timber reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,200 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Sharpe and Lake Francis Case.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Timber; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
