2 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



The first topographical division of the State may be into the 

 Coast and Interior districts, separated from each other by the 

 main ridge of the Coast Mountains, which runs the whole 

 length of the State, nearly parallel with the ocean, and about 

 fifty miles from it. The Coast district may be subdivided 

 into the Coast Mountains and the Coast Valleys. The Inter- 

 ior district may be subdivided into the Sierra Nevada, the 

 Sacramento- San Joaquin Basin, the IZlamath Basin, the 

 Enclosed American Basin, and the Colorado Desert. 



Of the 155,000 square miles in the State, there are, at my 

 estimate, 42,000 in the mountains and valleys of the Coast, 

 40,000 in the Sierra Nevada, 30,000 in the low land of the 

 Sacramento-San Joaquin Basin, 20,000 in the Enclosed Amer- 

 ican Basin, 15,000 in the Colorado Desert, and 8,000 in the 

 Klamath Basin. In the 42,000 square miles of the Coast 

 slope, 16,000 may be put down as valley and 26,000 as moun- 

 tain. The term " Basin," as used here, means the entire area 

 with a common drainage. Thus, the San Joaquin Basin is the 

 region between summits of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast 

 Range, south of latitude 38 20' ; the Sacramento-San Joaquin 

 Basin is all between the summits of those mountains, from 

 Tejon to Mount Shasta. 



3. The Coast Range. The Coast Range, though not so 

 high or so wide as the Sierra Nevada, may be considered the 

 main orographical feature of California, because it alone ex- 

 tends through the whole length of the State. Its height is 

 from two thousand to six thousand feet ; its width from twenty 

 to forty miles. It is composed of a multitude of ridges, of 

 which the Diablo Ridge is the main stern, while all the 

 others are branches springing out to the westward. We find 

 on the map, that in latitude 34 20' the Santa Susanna 

 Ridge branches off and runs southwestward ; in 34 30' the 

 Santa Inez Ridge starts and runs westward ; in 34 40' the 

 Santa Barbara Ridge turns west northwest ; the Santa Lucia 

 Ridge separates from the main trunk in 35, with a north- 



