The Adams 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Adams’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Council Grove Group (shale, limestone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 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 61×. 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, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 8 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 Adams reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Middle Branch Big Nemaha, the North Fork Big Nemaha, the Big Nemaha, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,740 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 Adams; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
