The Platina 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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Platina’s center stands about 2,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,410 ft to 3,860 ft, a difference of 2,450 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Yolla Bolly Mountains, about 7,820 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lower Cretaceous marine rocks (siltstone-mudstone), from the Early Cretaceous, 113 to 145 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 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.
Melange. Age: Devonian to Jurassic, 145 to 422 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, schist. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 113 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Early Cretaceous, 110 to 143 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Greenstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 0.5 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 Platina reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Middle Fork Cottonwood Creek, Cottonwood Creek and the Sacramento: about 330 river miles.
270 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Platina; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
