The website of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) features an astounding array of geographic data. The USGS Publications Warehouse is particularly loaded with free downloadable maps and research papers. I even found info on the obscure lava beds in my California homeland. I also discovered impressively detailed material on Mount Shasta (one of my favorite mountains) merely from a basic search on the USGS homepage. The Publications overview page provides a succinct, clickable outline of the various fact sheets, booklets, posters, teaching packets, etc. the USGS provides.
If you want geological info on a specific part of the U.S., the USGS site is probably one of your best bets. However, just what is the USGS? The paragraphs below (taken from the About USGS page) give one a glossy presentation of at least what the agency’s supposed to be.
“The USGS is a science organization that provides impartial information on the health of our ecosystems and environment, the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we rely on, the impacts of climate and land-use change, and the core science systems that help us provide timely, relevant, and useable information.”
“As the Nation's largest water, earth, and biological science and civilian mapping agency, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) collects, monitors, analyzes, and provides scientific understanding about natural resource conditions, issues, and problems. The diversity of our scientific expertise enables us to carry out large-scale, multi-disciplinary investigations and provide impartial scientific information to resource managers, planners, and other customers.”
University of Texas’s Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
Features maps (from all over the world) for a multitude of categories. There are plenty of maps for the U.S. and California, including high-resolution, detailed maps of national parks. Many maps can be downloaded as PDF files. I used the University of Texas’s online map collection for some of my research projects in college and learned about it from my Geographic Research and Writing teacher.
Based in northeastern California, the Pit River Watershed Alliance is supported by a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Their site has an abundance of information about the Pit River Watershed. Little Hot Springs Valley is great, but a lot of it is inaccessible due to private land, barbed wire fences, and the valley’s small size. If you want to check out scenery and ecosystems very similar to those in Little Hot Springs Valley, then you should visit the Pit River Watershed, which is near the valley to the north, east, and south. The Pit River Watershed Alliance’s “Interactive Journey” page has some nice multimedia features that let you explore the area via an interactive map that links to various 360° views. The “Background” page has a link to a huge PDF document (over 400 pages): The Upper Pit River Watershed Assessment. This document has regional data about many features, including: geology, grazing, fisheries, and wildlife.