The Onalaska 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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Onalaska’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 130 ft to 240 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beaumont Formation, areas predominantly sand, from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene, 2.6 to 5.3 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.3 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 Onalaska reaches Galveston Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Woodlands Golf Course Lake and the Trinity: about 140 river miles.
Lake on the way: Woodlands Golf Course Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Onalaska; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
