The Bealeton 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Bealeton’s center stands about 300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 460 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Prickly Pear Mountain, about 1,100 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Newark Supergroup; Triassic shale and siltstone (shale, siltstone), from the Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 32×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Neoproterozoic to Ordovician, 445 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Triassic, 202 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 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. 5 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 Bealeton reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Bowens Run, Marsh Run and the Rappahannock: about 150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bealeton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
