The Square Butte 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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Square Butte’s center stands about 3,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,060 ft to 4,440 ft, a difference of 1,380 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is East Peak, about 6,960 ft, 14 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kevin Member of Marias River Formation (shale, limestone, dolostone), from the Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 87 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 90 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Syenitic. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 87 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Square Butte reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cowboy Creek, Arrow Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,210 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 Square Butte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
