The Fontana Dam 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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Fontana Dam’s center stands about 1,900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,300 ft to 3,610 ft, a difference of 2,310 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Huckleberry Knob, about 5,540 ft, 12 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ocoee Supergroup, Great Smokey Group; Slate of Copperhill Formation (slate, phyllite), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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.
Metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Precambrian. About 0.8 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 Fontana Dam reaches the Gulf of America by way of Welch Cove Branch, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,670 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fontana Dam; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
