The Clear Creek 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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Clear Creek’s center stands about 4,990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,630 ft to 6,210 ft, a difference of 1,580 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Cinder Rock, about 7,710 ft, 15 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary volcanic flow rocks, unit 1 (Cascade Volcanic Field) (andesite, basalt), from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, metavolcanic. Age: Ordovician to Jurassic, 145 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Clear Creek reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Dry Creek, Hamilton Branch, the North Fork Feather, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 230 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Almanor.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clear Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
