Essex County, VA Elevation & Topographic Map
Elevation
200 ft 60 m150 ft 45 m130 ft 40 m76 ft 23 m25 ft 8 m0 ft 0 m
Contours every 500 ft, bold every 2,500 ft
USGS 3DEP · U.S. Census Bureau
How to use this mapviews, tools and data
- Elevation
- Ground colored by height from green (lowest) to white (highest), with contour lines every 40–500 ft (USGS data).
- Satellite
- A 2016 satellite photo at 33 ft (10 m) detail; contours off.
- 3D
- Tilt and turn the terrain; hills are raised 1.5×, or set ×1 for true height.
- Click or tap anywhere
- The exact elevation of that spot in ft and m.
- Measure
- Pick two points for the climb, descent and grade along a straight line.
- County area
- Fades everything outside the official county boundary (US Census).
Elevation Data
Essex County averages about 94 ft (29 m) above sea level across all its land. Its ground runs from sea level on Portobago Bay to 200 ft on the northwest side.
Average elevation
94 ft 29 m
all land inside the county
Highest
200 ft 60 m
on the northwest side
Lowest
0 ft 0 m
at sea level on Portobago Bay
Essex County spans about 200 ft of height, so no single spot tells the whole story. The ruler shows where most of its land lies, and where the other numbers you'll see come from.
| Figure | Elevation |
|---|---|
| Average of all land | 94 ft29 m |
| Highest point Inside the county, on the northwest side | 200 ft60 m |
| Lowest point Where the land meets Portobago Bay | 0 ft0 m |
Elevation profile, west to east
11 mi west to east through Tappahannock.
Topographic Map
- Location
- County in Virginia, United States
- Population
- 10,683 2024 est.
- Land area
- 257.3 sq mi + 28.9 sq mi water
- Density
- 42 per sq mi
- Time zone
- Eastern UTC−5 / −4
- Landform region
- Coastal Plain
- Drains to
- Atlantic Ocean
⤓ Download this map
WebP, 1200 × 900. Free to use: credit “ElevationOf.com” with a link to this page.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, USGS
Nearby Places
Neighboring counties sharing a border, by average
- Caroline County170 ft
- King and Queen County98 ft
- Essex County94 ft
- King George County88 ft
- Richmond County77 ft
- Westmoreland County76 ft
- Middlesex County57 ft
Rankings by average elevation
- Counties in Virginia76th highest of 94
- Counties in the United States2,934th highest of 3,151
The one town in Essex County
- Tappahannock25 ft
How we measure
- Average: every USGS 3DEP bare-earth cell of land inside the Census county boundary (TIGER/Line, Jan 1 2026), weighted equally, on a 1 arc-second (≈100 ft, 30 m) grid. Land means the boundary minus Census area water.
- Highest and lowest: the highest land cell. Lowest: the lowest land cell; coastal ground within 3 ft (1 m) of named tidal water counts as sea level.
- Pits: the lowest point is the lowest ground outside closed hollows (quarry floors, mine pits, terrain-model artifacts): any hollow under 0.4 sq mi (1 km²), and any hollow under 2 sq mi (5 km²) whose floor is more than 100 ft (30 m) below its rim; and outside patches below sea level of under 0.4 sq mi (1 km²). The single lowest 3DEP cell, −1 ft at 37.8807° N, 76.8785° W, is in such a hollow or patch and is not counted; this coastal land's lowest point is sea level on the coast.
- Nearby Places: neighboring counties and rankings use each one's average elevation, on its own grid, the same figure its page shows. Peaks and hills: the highest summits inside the county with at least 980 ft (300 m) of prominence, then the highest federal (GNIS) summits inside it when there are fewer than 5; each is the 3DEP top on a ~7 ft (2 m) window, or the NGS published height when a usable survey mark sits within 160 ft (50 m) of it (shown as published).
- Towns: each town's typical elevation (population-weighted median of its own 2020 blocks at 1 arc-second); a town is listed when any of its 2020 residents live in the county.
- Rounding: computed heights are rounded to 10 ft (5 m), or to 1 ft (1 m) under 100 ft; 3DEP is good to about a meter, not a foot. Published figures (NGS survey heights) are shown as their publisher gives them.
- Datum: North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). NGS plans to replace NAVD 88 with a new datum (NAPGD2022); heights will then shift slightly.
- Sources: USGS 3DEP, GNIS, Watershed Boundary Dataset and physiographic provinces; U.S. Census Bureau (TIGER boundaries and water, 2020 blocks, 2024 population estimates, county adjacency); NOAA NGS survey heights; BTS time zones. All public domain.