The Orange 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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Orange’s center stands about 2,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 970 ft to 2,850 ft, a difference of 1,880 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Smarts Mountain, about 3,220 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Littleton Formation, Upper unnamed member (metaclastic), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 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 9×. 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.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, metaconglomerate. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 0.9 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 Orange reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the South Branch Baker, the Baker, the Pemigewasset and the Merrimack: about 180 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 Orange; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
