The Belden 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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Belden’s center stands about 2,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,230 ft to 6,430 ft, a difference of 4,200 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Eagle Mountain, about 7,170 ft, 5 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paleozoic marine rocks, undivided, unit 6 (Northwestern Sierra Nevada) (argillite, phyllite), from the Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Argillite, phyllite. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 7 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 Belden reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the North Fork Feather, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 200 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Belden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
