The Columbus 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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Columbus’s center stands about 1,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,910 ft to 1,950 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bullion Creek Formation (claystone, siltstone), 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 26×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, claystone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 0.9 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 Columbus reaches Hudson Bay by way of West Branch Short Creek, the Souris, the Assiniboine, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,330 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lakes on the way: Lake Darling and Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Souris.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Columbus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
