The Abie 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.
Abie’s center stands about 1,460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,390 ft to 1,610 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Greenhorn Limestone and Graneros Shale (shale, limestone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 46×. 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, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Abie reaches the Gulf of America by way of Skull Creek, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,850 river miles.
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 Abie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.