The Alder 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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Alder’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 2,570 ft, a difference of 1,670 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Storm King Mountain, about 4,680 ft, 12 miles south-southeast.
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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Andesite, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 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 Alder reaches Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean by way of Alder Lake and the Nisqually: about 45 river miles.
Lake on the way: Alder Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alder; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
