The White Clay 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; cooler
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
White Clay’s center stands about 3,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,210 ft to 3,620 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rattlesnake Peak, about 3,920 ft, 6 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows White River Group (clay), from the Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, volcanic. Age: Late Oligocene to Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Chalk, marlstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Claystone, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Early Oligocene to Late Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, bentonite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 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 White Clay reaches the Gulf of America by way of White Clay Creek, the White River, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,560 river miles.
Lakes on the way: 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 White Clay; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
