The Shaftsbury 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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Shaftsbury’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 2,690 ft, a difference of 1,910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stratton Mountain, about 3,940 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Shelburne Marble, from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 18 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.
Phyllite, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.2 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Argillite, mudstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 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. 12 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 Shaftsbury reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Paran Creek, the Walloomsac, the Hoosic and the Hudson: about 210 river miles.
170 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shaftsbury; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
