The Petty 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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Petty’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Brownstown Marl (claystone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 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.
Marlstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Chalk. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, carbonate. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 72 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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. 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 Petty reaches the Gulf of America by way of Rowdy Creek, the North Sulphur, the Sulphur, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 670 river miles.
Lake on the way: Wright Patman Lake.
320 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Petty; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
