The Shaver Lake 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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Shaver Lake’s center stands about 5,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,360 ft to 6,210 ft, a difference of 2,850 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Three Sisters, about 10,540 ft, 14 miles east.
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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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 24 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.
Shaver Lake straddles the rim of a basin with no outlet. Rain on the south side runs to the Tulare Lake basin; most of the rest goes to San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Musick Creek, Jose Creek, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 310 river miles. One that lands on the south side reaches the Tulare Lake basin by way of Rush Creek, Big Creek, the Kings and the North Fork Kings: about 130 river miles. The Tulare Lake basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Lake on the way: Millerton Lake.
260 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shaver Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
