The Richland Springs 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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Richland Springs’s center stands about 1,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,330 ft to 1,610 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brady Mountain, about 1,670 ft, 11 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marble Falls Limestone, from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 43×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Claystone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
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 Richland Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of Richland Springs Creek, the San Saba and the Colorado: about 510 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls and Lake Lyndon B Johnson.
320 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Richland Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
