The Marshall 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.
Marshall’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 990 ft to 1,080 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fairmont Shale, from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Marshall reaches the Gulf of America by way of Horse Creek, Skeleton Creek, the Cimarron, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,240 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 Marshall; river miles along the main stem, rounded.