The Magalia 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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Magalia’s center stands about 2,320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,300 ft to 3,260 ft, a difference of 1,960 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Table Mountain, about 6,300 ft, 14 miles northeast.
The section below crosses 6 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. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Argillite, phyllite. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 1 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 Magalia reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Middle Butte Creek, Little Butte Creek, Butte Creek and the Sacramento: about 190 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Magalia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
