The Joseph 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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Joseph’s center stands about 4,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,920 ft to 5,750 ft, a difference of 1,830 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Matterhorn, about 9,780 ft, 9 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial deposits (gravel, sand, boulders), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. 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: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Argillite, mudstone, shale. Age: Late Triassic, 227 to 227 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, granitic, granodiorite. Age: Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 208 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Spilite, volcanic. Age: Late Triassic, 227 to 237 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. 3 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 Joseph reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Wallowa, the Grande Ronde, the Snake and the Columbia: about 610 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
210 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Joseph; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
