The Wilton 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.
Wilton’s center stands about 2,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,000 ft to 2,200 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
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 2 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.
Claystone, siltstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 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 Wilton reaches the Gulf of America by way of Burnt Creek, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,520 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 Wilton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.