The North Pearsall 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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North Pearsall’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 720 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sparta Sand (sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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 61×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Gravel. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 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.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 0.9 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 North Pearsall reaches Corpus Christi Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Buck Creek, the Frio and the Nueces: about 220 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Horseshoe Tank and Lake Corpus Christi.
75 miles of the trip are on the Frio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of North Pearsall; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
