Physiographic Geography 

 inches and the difference in the mean temperature 

 of January and July is 35° to 40°F. Turning now to 

 the Pacific Coast, Santa Cruz, on the same parallel 

 of latitude, has within a fraction of a degree the 

 same mean annual temperature as has Norfolk, but 

 the difference hetween January and July is less than 

 14°F. instead of 38°F. Inland from the Pacific the 

 same distance as from the Atlantic, we find rapid 

 changes in rainfall and in temperature, with rapid 

 changes in the elevation which varies from over 

 fourteen thousand feet above to nearly three hun- 

 dred feet below the level of the sea. 



Starting at Santa Cruz, where surf bathing is 

 possible in January and where July is pleasantly 

 cool, there is no coastal plain, the mountains rising 

 abruptly from the sea to elevations of over three 

 thousand feet within twent}^ miles. Close to the 

 coast the redwood groves thrive under from twenty 

 to fifty inches of rainfall; but continuing inland 

 over the alternate mountain ridges and intervening 

 valleys, one descends suddenly within sixty miles 

 from the ocean to the low-lying wide plains of the 

 Great Valley of California with less than ten inches 

 of rain along its western border. In this interior 

 valley the annual range of mean temperature is only 

 slightly less than in Virginia but the winters are 

 ten degrees warmer. On the eastern side of the 

 Great Valley, near Merced and Fresno, the 37th 

 parallel passes through irrigated vineyards and 

 citrus orchards growing on the extensive alluvial 

 slopes at the foot of the mountains. Eastward again 

 the rainfall rapidly increases up the long gentle 

 slope of the Sierra Nevada through the mining dis- 

 trict to the great forest belt. Still upward the now 

 lessening precipitation is largely snow and at the 

 crest line of the High Sierra, fourteen thousand feet 

 above the sea, is found the Palisade Glacier.* 

 Standing on the top of the high cliff of the two-mile- 

 wide amphitheater at its head, the observer may 

 look over the yawning crevasses in the green ice, 

 down the steep eastern front of the Sierra Nevada 

 fault scarp, across the narrow green irrigated belt 

 at its foot, to the sage-brush marking the edge of the 

 arid plateaus. Eastward for another seventy-five 

 miles, over high ranges and across arid basins, 

 brings him to Death Valley, in places at least 278 

 feet below sea level. This valley, with its burning 

 summer heat rising sometimes to 137°F. in the shade, 

 and its dry sandy and salt-incrusted waste slopes 

 fully satisfies one s early conception of a desert. 



* Palisade Glacier is fifteen miles from Big Pine on the 

 railroad running northwest from Mohave through Owens 

 Valley. 



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