The Waupaca 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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Waupaca’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 810 ft to 1,010 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Rhyolite (rhyolite, mixed-clastic), 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 43×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, mixed-clastic. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Waupaca reaches Lake Michigan by way of the South Branch Little Wolf, the Little Wolf, the Wolf River and the Fox River: about 130 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.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waupaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
