The Athelstane 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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Athelstane’s center stands about 950 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McCaslin Mountain, about 1,640 ft, 15 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Athelstane Quartz Monzonite (granite, granodiorite), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 31×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.8 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Athelstane reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Wausaukee and the Menominee: about 65 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Athelstane; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
