The Garrison 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.
24° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 25° in 1997.
Garrison’s center stands about 420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bennett Mountain, about 590 ft, 6 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wilcox Group, undivided (mudstone), from the Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 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 58×. 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. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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.
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 Garrison reaches the Gulf of America by way of Jenks Creek, the Attoyac, the Angelina and the Neches: about 270 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Ester Lake, Sabine Lake and B A Steinhagen Lake.
110 miles of the trip are on the Neches.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Garrison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Garrison has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Garrison normally reaches 68° and falls to 45°. The record high is 86°, in 2025; the record low 27°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 1.41 in, fell in 1998.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Nacogdoches, 17 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.