The Howardwick 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.
Howardwick’s center stands about 2,750 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,550 ft to 2,880 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Ararat, about 3,150 ft, 6 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ogallala Formation (sand), from the Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 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 28×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Late Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 12 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. 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 0.7 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 Howardwick reaches the Gulf of America by way of Carrol Creek, the Salt Fork Red, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 1,270 river miles.
980 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Howardwick; river miles along the main stem, rounded.