The Athens 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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Athens’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 380 ft to 560 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tater Hill Mountain, about 800 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carizzo Sand (sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 51×. 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: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 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 Athens reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Coon Creek, Catfish Creek and the Trinity: about 330 river miles.
Lake on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake.
120 miles of the trip are on the Trinity.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Athens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
