The Francis 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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Francis’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,020 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tate Mountain, about 1,130 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Coffeyville or Francis Formation (restricted) (shale, sandstone, limestone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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. 7 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 Francis reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Canadian, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,100 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray 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 Francis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
