The Methow 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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Methow’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,060 ft to 3,070 ft, a difference of 2,010 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is North Navarre Peak, about 7,930 ft, 15 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (silt, sand), from the Holocene, less than 12,000 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 4×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Eocene. About 7 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 0.7 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 Methow reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Methow and the Columbia: about 530 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Umatilla.
240 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Methow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
