The Stephenson 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Stephenson’s center stands about 920 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 740 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thunder Mountain, about 1,450 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wolf River Batholith; Belongia Granite, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Monzonite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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.
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 Stephenson reaches Lake Michigan by way of the Peshtigo: about 55 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 Stephenson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
