The Goldcreek 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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73° on Nov. 12, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1927. Next is 67° in 1990.
Goldcreek’s center stands about 4,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,140 ft to 5,060 ft, a difference of 920 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pikes Peak, about 9,270 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (gravel, sand, silt), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 1.8 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 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.
Black-shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 94 to 113 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sedimentary-breccia, conglomerate. Age: Early Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sedimentary. Age: Tertiary, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, sandstone. Age: Late Mississippian to Permian, 252 to 331 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 100 million years old. About 3 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 Goldcreek reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Clark Fork, the Pend Oreille and the Columbia: about 1,150 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Pend Oreille, Lake Umatilla and Noxon Rapids Reservoir.
460 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Goldcreek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Goldcreek has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 30 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 12 inches of water.
On November 14 Goldcreek normally reaches 41° and falls to 20°. The record high is 62°, in 2025; the record low −31°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 0.31 in, fell in 2005.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1927 at Dummond 0.4 SSW, 12 miles west-northwest, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
