The Johnstown 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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Johnstown’s center stands about 690 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 530 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shaker Mountain, about 2,540 ft, 14 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Canajoharie Shale (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Johnstown reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cayadutta Creek, the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 220 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Johnstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
