The Falls City 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.
Falls City’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Marcelinas Hills, about 570 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Terrace deposits (sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone, sand. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 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. 3 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 Falls City reaches the Gulf of America by way of Marcelinas Creek, the San Antonio, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 160 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Falls City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.