The Manheim 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.
Manheim’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 330 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 900 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jerseyfield Mountain, about 2,320 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Utica Shale (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 13×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, metasedimentary. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 0.8 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 Manheim reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Crum Creek, the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 240 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 Manheim; river miles along the main stem, rounded.