The Paoli 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.
Paoli’s center stands about 960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Woodford Shale (black-shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 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.
Black-shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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.
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 Paoli reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Washita, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 960 river miles.
680 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Paoli; river miles along the main stem, rounded.