The Buckhorn 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
Buckhorn’s center stands about 3,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,210 ft to 3,930 ft, a difference of 1,720 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Blue Mountain, about 6,020 ft, 12 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Paleozoic marine rocks, undivided, unit 4 (Western Sierra Nevada) (argillite, quartzite, phyllite), from the Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Andesite. 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 6 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 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 Buckhorn reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Pioneer Creek, Sutter Creek, Dry Creek, the Mokelumne, the South Mokelumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 110 river miles.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Buckhorn; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
