The Lincoln 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.
Lincoln’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 710 ft to 2,910 ft, a difference of 2,200 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Lafayette, about 5,200 ft, 8 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower part of Rangeley Formation (metaclastic), from the Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Early Jurassic to Middle Jurassic, 164 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granitic. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. 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 2 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 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.
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 Lincoln reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of Clear Brook, the Pemigewasset and the Merrimack: about 170 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 Lincoln; river miles along the main stem, rounded.