The Clayton 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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Clayton’s center stands about 2,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,160 ft to 2,810 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Boyer Mountain, about 5,270 ft, 15 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial drift, undivided (sand, gravel), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Argillite, siltstone. Age: Mesoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,600 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 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.
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 Clayton reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Beaver Creek, Dragoon Creek, the Little Spokane, the Spokane and the Columbia: about 720 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
360 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
