The Lodge Pole 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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Lodge Pole’s center stands about 3,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,240 ft to 4,580 ft, a difference of 1,340 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Antoine Butte, about 5,730 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Claggett Formation (shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 5 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.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 7 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 Lodge Pole reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lodge Pole Creek, South Fork Peoples Creek, Peoples Creek, the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,270 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 Lodge Pole; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
