The Stirling City 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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Stirling City’s center stands about 3,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,570 ft to 4,920 ft, a difference of 2,350 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snow Mountain, about 7,040 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tertiary volcanic flow rocks, unit 17 (Cascade Range) (andesite, basalt), from the Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
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.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units 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 Stirling City reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Little West Fork West Branch Feather, the West Branch Feather, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 180 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stirling City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
