The Nellysford 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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Nellysford’s center stands about 2,830 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 3,480 ft, a difference of 2,860 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Priest, about 4,060 ft, 12 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catoctin Formation - Metabasalt, from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Metabasalt. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granulite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granulite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mylonite, gneiss, cataclasite. Age: Proterozoic to Phanerozoic, less than 2,500 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. 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 Nellysford reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pauls Creek, the Rockfish and the James: about 230 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nellysford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
