The Roan Mountain 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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Roan Mountain’s center stands about 2,580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,550 ft to 4,010 ft, a difference of 1,460 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Roan High Knob, about 6,280 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beech Granite, from the Neoproterozoic, 700 to 712 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 700 to 712 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic to Neoproterozoic, 965 to 1,003 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Roan Mountain reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Doe, the Watauga, the South Fork Holston, the Holston, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,860 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Roan Mountain; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
