The Morton 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.
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Morton’s center stands about 930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 2,760 ft, a difference of 1,870 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 5,270 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
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.
Andesite, basaltic-andesite. Age: Late Eocene, 34 to 38 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, gravel. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gravel, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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 Morton reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Tilton, the Cowlitz and the Columbia: about 140 river miles.
65 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Morton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
