The Smiths Ferry 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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Smiths Ferry’s center stands about 4,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,520 ft to 6,110 ft, a difference of 1,590 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snowbank Mountain, about 8,310 ft, 10 miles north-northwest.
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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite, granodiorite, quartz-diorite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 70 to 100 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 67 to 107 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Metaigneous, granodiorite. Age: Late Cretaceous, 80 to 90 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, tonalite, quartz-diorite. Age: Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 87 to 160 million years old. About 0.9 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 Smiths Ferry reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the North Fork Payette, the Payette, the Snake and the Columbia: about 770 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Umatilla, Brownlee Reservoir and Hells Canyon Reservoir.
240 miles of the trip are on the Snake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Smiths Ferry; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
