The Sherando 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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Sherando’s center stands about 1,470 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,380 ft to 2,990 ft, a difference of 1,610 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Priest, about 4,060 ft, 13 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Shady Dolomite (dolostone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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. 8 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 Sherando reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Back Creek, the South River, the South Fork Shenandoah, the Shenandoah and the Potomac: about 360 river miles.
180 miles of the trip are on the Potomac.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sherando; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
