The Thorndale 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.
Thorndale’s center stands about 460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 390 ft to 520 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Paleocene to Eocene, 34 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Late Paleocene to Early Eocene, 48 to 59 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Thorndale reaches the Gulf of America by way of Berry Branch, Brushy Slough, Brushy Creek, the San Gabriel, the Little River and the Brazos: about 380 river miles.
320 miles of the trip are on the Brazos.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Thorndale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.