The Medicine Lake 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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Medicine Lake’s center stands about 1,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,920 ft to 2,070 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Flagstaff Hill, about 2,520 ft, 11 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tongue River Member of Fort Union Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old.
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 31×. 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. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 0.1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Medicine Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Muddy Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,850 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 Medicine Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
