The Cardwell 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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Cardwell’s center stands about 4,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,260 ft to 5,480 ft, a difference of 1,220 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Manhead Mountain, about 9,920 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (gravel, sand, silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sedimentary-breccia, conglomerate. Age: Early Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone, shale. Age: Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 172 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, quartzite, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Middle Cambrian, 497 to 521 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. 9 smaller units 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 Cardwell reaches the Gulf of America by way of Jefferson Slough, the Jefferson, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,510 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Fort Peck and Lake Sharpe.
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 Cardwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
