The Shipman 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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Shipman’s center stands about 1,010 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 570 ft to 1,740 ft, a difference of 1,170 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Priest, about 4,060 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 15 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.
Phyllite, schist. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granulite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Leucocratic-granitic. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 9 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 Shipman reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Nero Creek, Rucker Run, the Tye and the James: about 220 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shipman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
