Glacial Epochs of the Santa Monica Mountains, California

Abstract

Situation and Physiography.-The four Santa Barbara Islands of southern California are aligned from west to east toward a land-bound member of the same series of upheaved masses, which constitutes the Santa Monica Mountains and which, with a length of 45 miles and a width of 10 or 15, reaches inland to Los Angeles, LA, figure 1. These mountains consist, according to Hoots, of deformed Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks, upfolded in mid-Miocene time. They were then greatly worn down before being broadly upheaved, along with a belt of weak and little deformed upper Miocene beds adjoining on the south, to altitudes of 2000 or 3000 feet in mid-Pleistocene time, in consequence of which they are now deeply dissected, and the belt of weak Miocene beds, much narrowed, is reduced to low relief. The western 30 miles of the southern mountain slope are bordered by the Pacific; there the shoreline is followed below the high-clift ends of the mountain spurs by a fine state highway of recent construction, much traveled as it avoids the heavy grades of roads farther inland.

Files

Additional details