The Cody 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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Cody’s center stands about 5,080 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,800 ft to 5,400 ft, a difference of 600 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rattlesnake Mountain, about 8,260 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gravel, pediment, and fan deposits, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gravel. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Carboniferous to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 359 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million 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. 10 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Cody reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Shoshone, the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,240 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Oahe, Lake Sakakawea, Lake Sharpe and Lake Francis Case.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cody; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
