The White Sulphur Springs 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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White Sulphur Springs’s center stands about 5,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,930 ft to 5,520 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Wapiti Peak, about 8,540 ft, 9 miles southeast.
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 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.
Age: Late Miocene to Holocene, less than 7.2 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sedimentary-breccia, conglomerate. Age: Early Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 56 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Late Devonian to Early Mississippian, 347 to 374 million years old. About 0.7 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 White Sulphur Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hot Springs Creek, the Smith, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,430 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 White Sulphur Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
