The Nixon 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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Nixon’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cook Mountain Formation (claystone, sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 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.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Claystone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sand. Age: Oligocene, 23 to 34 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Nixon reaches the Gulf of America by way of Clear Fork Creek, Sandies Creek, the Guadalupe and the South Guadalupe: about 160 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Guadalupe.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nixon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
