The Fortine 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.
Fortine’s center stands about 2,960 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,850 ft to 3,740 ft, a difference of 890 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Nasukoin Mountain, about 8,020 ft, 15 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial deposit (unconsolidated), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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 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.
Quartzite, metasiltstone, argillite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Quartzite, argillite, metasiltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 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 Fortine reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Deep Creek, Fortine Creek, the Tobacco, the Kootenai and the Columbia: about 910 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fortine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.