The Monarch 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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Monarch’s center stands about 4,640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,510 ft to 6,120 ft, a difference of 1,610 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Baldy Mountain, about 9,160 ft, 14 miles southeast.
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 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.
Granitic. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian to Late Mississippian, 324 to 347 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Late Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 374 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Mississippian, 331 to 347 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Early Cretaceous, 125 to 133 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 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 Monarch reaches the Gulf of America by way of Belt Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,320 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 Monarch; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
