The Fishtail 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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Fishtail’s center stands about 4,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,280 ft to 4,960 ft, a difference of 680 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Butte, about 8,420 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 84 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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. 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 Fishtail reaches the Gulf of America by way of West Rosebud Creek, Rosebud Creek, the Stillwater, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,170 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 Fishtail; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
