The Raleigh 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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Raleigh’s center stands about 2,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,980 ft to 2,370 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Antelope Hills, about 2,420 ft, 8 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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, 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 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Raleigh reaches the Gulf of America by way of Dogtooth Creek, the Cannonball, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,500 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sharpe, Lake Francis Case and Lewis and Clark Lake.
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 Raleigh; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
