The Clayton 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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Clayton’s center stands about 5,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,460 ft to 9,240 ft, a difference of 3,780 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sheep Mountain, about 10,880 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sedimentary rocks (Ordovician and Cambrian) (limestone, dolostone), from the Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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.
Dacite, andesite, rhyolite. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone, mudstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Clayton reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Salmon, the Snake and the Columbia: about 850 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
350 miles of the trip are on the Salmon.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
