The Vian 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.
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Vian’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 880 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Beaver Mountain, about 1,630 ft, 14 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace Deposits (coarse-detrital, fine-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 22×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Carboniferous, 324 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.9 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 Vian reaches the Gulf of America by way of Vian Creek, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 970 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 Vian; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
