The Bear Valley 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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Bear Valley’s center stands about 2,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 3,950 ft, a difference of 3,070 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sweetwater Point, about 4,590 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Jurassic marine rocks, unit 1 (Western Sierra Nevada and Western Klamath Mountains) (slate, graywacke), from the Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.4 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 Bear Valley reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Bear Creek, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 210 river miles.
130 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bear Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
