The Stoystown 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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Stoystown’s center stands about 2,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,710 ft to 2,340 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Knob, about 2,960 ft, 13 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glenshaw Formation (shale), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 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 14×. 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. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Stoystown reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Stonycreek, the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminetas, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,080 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stoystown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
