The Bay City 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.
Bay City’s center stands about 12 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 1,810 ft: steep hill country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Triangulation Point, about 3,250 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tillamook Volcanics (basalt), from the Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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 Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Bay City reaches Tillamook Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Patterson Creek and Tillamook Bay: about 4 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bay City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.