The Meshoppen 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.
Meshoppen’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 610 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 720 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bartlett Mountain, about 2,410 ft, 10 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catskill Formation (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 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 Meshoppen reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Little Meshoppen Creek and the Susquehanna: about 240 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
190 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Meshoppen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.