The Cherokee 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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Cherokee’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 420 ft to 2,150 ft, a difference of 1,730 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Bar Mountain, about 4,400 ft, 10 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic volcanic rocks, unit 2 (Western Sierra Foothills and Western Klamath Mountains) (mafic-volcanic), from the Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 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.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Argillite, phyllite. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Cherokee reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the West Branch Feather, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 160 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 Cherokee; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
