The Big Bend 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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Big Bend’s center stands about 1,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,610 ft to 3,590 ft, a difference of 1,980 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Grizzly Peak, about 6,210 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eocene nonmarine rocks, unit 1 (Northern and Central California) (sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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 8 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, mudstone. Age: Middle Triassic to Late Triassic, 202 to 247 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Slate, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Late Jurassic, 145 to 422 million years old. About 3 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 Big Bend reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Pit and the Sacramento: about 360 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Bend; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
