The 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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Butte’s center stands about 1,740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,600 ft to 1,980 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dogden Butte, about 2,280 ft, 5 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cannonball Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 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 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 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.
