The Fairfield 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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Fairfield’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 740 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Laraway Mountain, about 2,780 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fairfield Pond Formation (phyllite, quartzite), from the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Quartz-feldspar-schist, phyllite, metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Muscovite-schist, gneiss, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Fairfield reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Fairfield, Black Creek, the Missisquoi and the Richelieu: about 160 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
80 miles of the trip are on the Richelieu.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fairfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
