The Howell 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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Howell’s center stands about 4,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,480 ft to 5,190 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Limekiln Knoll, about 6,640 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lake Bonneville deposits (clay), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, carbonate. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Permian, 273 to 315 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 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 Howell reaches Great Salt Lake by way of Blue Creek: about 25 river miles. Great Salt Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 100% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Howell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
