The Owl Creek 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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Owl Creek’s center stands about 5,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,160 ft to 5,910 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Adam Weiss Peak, about 7,180 ft, 12 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Frontier Formation and Mowry and Thermopolis Shales (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 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.
Black-shale, sandstone, dolostone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 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. 5 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 Owl Creek reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cottonwood Creek, the Bighorn, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,320 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 Owl Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
