The Owyhee 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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Owyhee’s center stands about 5,400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 5,350 ft to 6,960 ft, a difference of 1,610 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pennsylvania Hill, about 9,090 ft, 15 miles south.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Pliocene, 3 to 15 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 48 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt, sedimentary. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand, silt. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Owyhee reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Owyhee, the Snake and the Columbia: about 990 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Umatilla, Brownlee Reservoir, Lake Owyhee and Hells Canyon Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Owyhee; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
