The Mineral 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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Mineral’s center stands about 1,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 3,390 ft, a difference of 2,170 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Wow, about 5,860 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
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 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.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Andesite, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 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 Mineral reaches Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean by way of Mineral Creek and the Nisqually: about 60 river miles.
Lake on the way: Alder Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mineral; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
