The Jordan 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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Jordan’s center stands about 2,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,570 ft to 2,810 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Darby Buttes, about 3,070 ft, 11 miles south.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 42×. 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. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, bentonite. Age: Early Paleocene, 62 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 0.9 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 Jordan reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Dry Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,040 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 Jordan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
