The Campton 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.
Campton’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 540 ft to 2,000 ft, a difference of 1,460 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Osceola, about 4,320 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Madrid Formation (granofels, calc-silicate-rock, pelitic-schist), from the Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granofels, calc-silicate-rock, pelitic-schist. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metasedimentary. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units 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 Campton reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Beebe, the Pemigewasset and the Merrimack: about 150 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Campton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.