The Reubens 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.
Reubens’s center stands about 3,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,530 ft to 3,760 ft, a difference of 1,230 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mason Butte, about 4,620 ft, 9 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Columbia River Basalt Group (basalt, basaltic-andesite), from the Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Basalt, basaltic-andesite. Age: Early Miocene to Late Miocene, 6 to 18 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 90 to 160 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, clay. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Reubens reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Lapwai Creek, the Clearwater, the Snake and the Columbia: about 490 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Reubens; river miles along the main stem, rounded.