The Catawba 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.
Catawba’s center stands about 1,420 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,380 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Timms Hill, about 1,990 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mafic to felsic metavolcanic rocks, from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 48×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 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 Catawba reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hobbles Creek, the North Fork Jump, the Jump, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,900 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Wissota and Holcombe Flowage.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Catawba; river miles along the main stem, rounded.