The Hico 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.
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Hico’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 980 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lone Mountain, about 1,400 ft, 12 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glen Rose Limestone (limestone, marlstone), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone, marlstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Hico reaches the Gulf of America by way of Jacks Hollow Branch, the North Bosque, the South Bosque and the Brazos: about 510 river miles.
Lake on the way: Waco Lake.
410 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hico; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
