The Whitehall 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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Showers likely; cooler
Partly cloudy
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Whitehall’s center stands about 4,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,310 ft to 4,910 ft, a difference of 600 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Manhead Mountain, about 9,920 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Andesite, latite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 20 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, black-shale. Age: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 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.
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 Whitehall reaches the Gulf of America by way of Whitetail Deer Creek, Jefferson Slough, the Jefferson, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,530 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 Whitehall; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
