The Mountain Lakes 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.
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Mountain Lakes’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 490 ft to 1,860 ft, a difference of 1,370 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Moosilauke, about 4,790 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ammonoosuc Volcanics, Bimodal volcanic rocks (felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic), from the Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metasandstone, metasiltstone, phyllite. Age: Middle Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 485 to 500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 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. 5 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 Mountain Lakes reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Waterman Brook, the Wild Ammonoosuc, the Ammonoosuc and the Connecticut: about 270 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mountain Lakes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
