The Newcastle 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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Newcastle’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 890 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Coyote Hill, about 2,440 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 3 (Sierra Nevada, Death Valley area, Northern Mojave Desert and Transverse Ranges) (granodiorite), from the Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 0.8 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 Newcastle reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Dry Creek and the Sacramento: about 95 river miles.
55 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Newcastle; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
