The Wheeler 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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Wheeler’s center stands about 40 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 1,230 ft: steep hill country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Triangulation Point, about 3,250 ft, 12 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tuffaceous siltstone and sandstone (mudstone), from the Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 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 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 10 mi of the line.
Mudstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.8 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 Wheeler reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Nehalem: about 5 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wheeler; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
