The Curlew 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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Curlew’s center stands about 1,790 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,780 ft to 3,570 ft, a difference of 1,790 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Copper Butte, about 7,130 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eocene-Oligocene volcanic rocks (andesite, basalt), from the Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 8 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, granite. Age: Early Paleocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite, granite, basalt. Age: Eocene to Early Pliocene, 3.6 to 56 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 Curlew reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Curlew Creek and the Columbia: about 740 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
420 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Curlew; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
