The Columbus 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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Columbus’s center stands about 3,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,540 ft to 4,090 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Warner Hill, about 4,600 ft, 12 miles northwest.
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 15×. 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.
Sandstone. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 0.5 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 Columbus reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,150 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 Columbus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
