The Powder River 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Powder River’s center stands about 5,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,590 ft to 5,990 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Mountain, about 6,740 ft, 7 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dune sand and loess (sand, unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 78 to 83 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, claystone. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 0.5 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 Powder River reaches the Gulf of America by way of the South Fork Powder, the Powder River, the Yellowstone, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 3,400 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 Powder River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
