The Sage Creek Colony 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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72° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 70° in 1934.
Sage Creek Colony’s center stands about 3,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,270 ft to 3,850 ft, a difference of 580 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Brown, about 6,920 ft, 8 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Judith River Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 158 to 172 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 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. 2 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 Sage Creek Colony reaches the Gulf of America by way of Sage Creek, Big Sandy Creek, the Milk River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,510 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 Sage Creek Colony; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sage Creek Colony has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 15 inches of water.
On November 14 Sage Creek Colony normally reaches 42° and falls to 19°. The record high is 72°, in 1999; the record low −21°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.21 in, fell in 1986.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Goldbutte 7 N, 20 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
