The Camden 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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82° on Nov. 14, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 80° in 2021.
Camden’s center stands about 200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 320 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Buck Hill, about 500 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvial Valley Swamp (sand, gravel), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 55×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Middle Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 521 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mylonite. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Cretaceous to Tertiary, 2.6 to 145 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 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.
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 Camden reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Wateree, the Congaree, the Santee and the South Santee: about 200 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lib Pines Lake.
70 miles of the trip are on the Santee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Camden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Camden has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Wateree Dam, 8 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
