The Stevenson 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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22° on Nov. 15, 1909, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 22° in 1911.
Stevenson’s center stands about 210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 2,000 ft, a difference of 1,930 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Defiance, about 4,950 ft, 8 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Oligocene nonmarine rocks (conglomerate), from the Late Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 38 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 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 6 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Late Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 38 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Early Pliocene to Pleistocene, 1.2 to 3.9 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basaltic-andesite, basalt. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, silt. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Stevenson reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Rock Creek and the Columbia: about 150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stevenson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stevenson has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in August; winter nights fall to about 33° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Stevenson normally reaches 51° and falls to 39°. The record high is 65°, in 1906; the record low 25°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 2.77 in, fell in 1896.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Cascade Locks, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
