The Mattoon 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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Mattoon’s center stands about 1,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,230 ft to 1,370 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wolf River batholith; Wolf River Granite, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. 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. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Anorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 12 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 Mattoon reaches Lake Michigan by way of the West Branch Red, the Red River, the Wolf River and the Fox River: about 220 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Lake Winnebago 6124, Lake Winneconne and Lake Butte des Morts.
100 miles of the trip are on the Wolf River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mattoon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
