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Published April 1979 | public
Book

Geologic guide to the Kings Canyon Highway, central Sierra Nevada, California

Abstract

The route along the Kings Canyon Highway, California State Highway 180, adjacent to the Kings River Canyon, provides an important geologic traverse extending about three-quarters of the way across the Sierra Nevada. Only the highest part of the Sierra Nevada and the steep eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada are omitted. This route follows rather closely parts of the trail of the first scientific expedition into this part of the Sierra Nevada, the 1864 Whitney Survey of the Geological Survey of California. The survey field party included William Brewer, party chief, Charles Hoffman, topographer, Clarence King (later to become the first Director of the U.S. Geological Survey) and James Gardner, geologists, and Dick Cotter, packer. This party discovered and named many of the loftier peaks in California, including Mount Whitney. The eastern part of the Kings Canyon Highway route appears on Figure 1 which is an oblique physiographic map of the central Sierra Nevada, viewed from 30 degrees above the horizontal from the southwest, prepared by Tau Rho Alpha (1977). The route is shown in more detail on Figure 2. Figure 2, a part of the 1:250,000 scale Fresno topographic map, shows the approximate estimated route of the 1864 Whitney Survey. Stops of interest for the road log are given: (1) as miles distance from the western end of the route at the intersection of Kings Canyon Highway and Clovis Boulevard on the eastern side of Fresno; and (2) in parentheses as miles distance from the eastern end of the route at Roads End in Kings Canyon east of Cedar Grove.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023