The Rancho Calaveras 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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Rancho Calaveras’s center stands about 520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 940 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Joaquin Peak, about 2,800 ft, 9 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Miocene nonmarine rocks (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 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 Rancho Calaveras reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Indian Creek, the Calaveras, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 75 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rancho Calaveras; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
