The Cookson 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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Cookson’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 1,190 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Beaver Mountain, about 1,630 ft, 7 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Atoka Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Chert, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, chert. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.5 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 Cookson reaches the Gulf of America by way of Elk Creek, the Illinois, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,000 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake, Tenkiller Ferry Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cookson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
