The Packwood 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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Packwood’s center stands about 1,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,020 ft to 4,250 ft, a difference of 3,230 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gilbert Peak, about 7,990 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
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 4 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.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 56 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 34 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Holocene, less than 5.3 million years old. About 0.5 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 Packwood reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Hall Creek, the Cowlitz and the Columbia: about 190 river miles.
Lake on the way: Riffe Lake.
65 miles of the trip are on the Cowlitz.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Packwood; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
