The Swanton 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.
Chance of showers
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Swanton’s center stands about 150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 370 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Leach Hill, about 1,430 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Slate. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-feldspar-schist, phyllite, metagraywacke. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, sedimentary-breccia, dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Early Cambrian, 521 to 542 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. 5 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 Swanton reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Missisquoi, the West Branch Missisquoi and the Richelieu: about 130 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 Swanton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
