The Mercer 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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Mercer’s center stands about 1,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 1,680 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Menominee Group; Blair Creek Formation (basalt), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Paleoarchean, 3.2 to 3.6 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Biotite-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 2 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 Mercer reaches the Gulf of America by way of Lipp Lake, the Flambeau, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,980 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lipp Lake, Lake Wissota and Holcombe Flowage.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mercer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
