The Parkman 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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81° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is 75° in 2025.
Parkman’s center stands about 4,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,060 ft to 4,740 ft, a difference of 680 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 9,390 ft, 15 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fox Hills Sandstone and Bearpaw Shale (sandstone, shale), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 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.
Shale. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Paleocene, 59 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Middle Cambrian to Late Ordovician, 445 to 521 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, dolostone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 359 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. 8 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 Parkman reaches the Gulf of America by way of South Fork Fivemile Creek, Fivemile Creek, the Tongue River, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,200 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 Parkman; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Parkman has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Parkman normally reaches 47° and falls to 20°. The record high is 75°, in 2025; the record low −19°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1964.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 from the Sheridan Area threaded record (Sheridan Airport, 22 miles southeast, 330 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
