Geography
An intermontaine valley at approximately 4,850 feet (1,480 m) elevation, Sierra Valley is surrounded by mountains ranging in elevation from 6 to 8,000 feet (2,400 m). The huge valley, 120,000 acres (490 km2), is a down-faulted basin, formerly a lake bed of similar geologic origin to Lake Tahoe to the south, now filled with sediment up to two thousand feet thick. Average annual rainfall is less than twenty inches, most falling as snow. The valley floor has a grassland and sagebrush ecosystem and is the site of extensive freshwater marshes filled with cattails, bulrushes and alkaline flats that drain into the middle fork of the Feather River. Many species of wildlife make their permanent home in the valley, and a great number of migratory bird species stop over in the fall and nest in Sierra Valley in the spring. The Valley also has thermal activity. Marble Hot Springs is located in the north central valley floor.
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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