The cache is placed in the USGS Meridian Quadrangle in California. It is the twenty-fourth in our series of caches placed near the site for which a USGS 7 ½-minute quadrangle map is named.
Meridian is a small farm town located beside the Sacramento River. According to Wikipedia it is the smallest community in Sutter County. One interesting feature is a rotation-style drawbridge that is located here on SR 20.
The Quadrangle boundaries are:
N 39º 07’ 30” and N 39º 15’ 00”
W 121º 52’ 30” and W 122º 00’ 00”.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has many missions. At one time, a major mission of the USGS was the supplying of topographic maps of the United States on several scales. Our cache series is based on the 7.5-minute quadrangle series.
The term quadrangle is used, instead of quadrilateral or rectangle, because the sides of these blocks are curved. The USGS divided the United States into quadrangles that are 7.5 minutes by 7.5 minutes. Since a degree is divided into 60 minutes, a quadrangle one degree by one degree contains 64 of these quadrangles.