The Cooke City 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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Cooke City’s center stands about 7,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 7,450 ft to 10,240 ft, a difference of 2,790 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Granite Peak, about 12,670 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
The section below crosses 11 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.
Gneiss. Age: Archean. About 11 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Cooke City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Soda Butte Creek, the Lamar, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,360 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 Cooke City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
