The Bennington 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.
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Bennington’s center stands about 730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 1,790 ft, a difference of 1,180 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Monadnock Mountain, about 3,130 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kinsman Granodiorite, from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasedimentary. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granofels, calc-silicate-rock, pelitic-schist. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit along the line are not listed.
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 Bennington reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Contoocook and the Merrimack: about 140 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bennington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
