The Glenrock 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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Glenrock’s center stands about 5,020 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,960 ft to 5,440 ft, a difference of 480 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Banner Mountain, about 7,280 ft, 15 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fox Hills Sandstone (sandstone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 4 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Glenrock reaches the Gulf of America by way of Deer Creek, the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 2,460 river miles.
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 Glenrock; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
