The Townsend 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; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Townsend’s center stands about 1,330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,460 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McCaslin Mountain, about 1,640 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Wolf River batholith; Hager Formation; Rhyolite member, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 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 23×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Rhyolite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Metavolcanic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Quartzite, conglomerate. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt, andesite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.9 to 1.9 billion years old. About 0.3 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 Townsend reaches Lake Michigan by way of McCaslin Brook, the North Branch Oconto and the Oconto: about 100 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
55 miles of the trip are on the Oconto.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Townsend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
