SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES 259 
Thermal is a village in the irrigation settlement that extends along 
the Coachella Valley from Mecca to Indio and beyond. The fine 
fields of alfalfa and other products of irrigation in this 
Rlevation 121 fee. | 2e# Contrast strongly with the desert conditions in 
Population 400.* the valley lands which have not been reclaimed. The 
ee 1,865 soil is rich and responds readily to cultivation, and 
many oranges, dates, and melons are grown, irrigated 
by water from wells. 
In ascending the Coachella Valley there are fine views of the adjoin- 
ing mountains. To the west is the Santa Rosa Range, consisting 
mainly of hard schists and igneous rocks. To the east 
are the low but rugged Mecca Hills, consisting mostly 
of softer sandstones and clays. These and the Indio 
Hills, their northwesterly continuation, rise about 
1,000 feet above the valley plain and show a large 
amount of badland topography due to rapid erosion cutting 
steep-sided gullies in soft materials. There are two distinct 
formations. The lower one, of marine origin and regarded as the same 
as the late Tertiary beds in the Carrizo Mountains, far to the south- 
east, crops out in small areas east and west of the mouth of Thousand 
Palms Canyon and in the northern part of the Indio Hills. It con- 
sists of yellow clay with some sandstone and conglomerate and indi- 
cates an extension of the waters of the Gulf of California to San 
Gorgonio Pass in late Tertiary time. In places it carries reefs filled 
with fossil oysters. It is overlain by several thousand feet of late 
Tertiary clays, apparently playa deposits, arkosic sandstones, and 
conglomerates. (Woodring.) 7 
The strata in the Indio and Mecca Hills are folded in compressed 
anticlines and synclines, which in general are parallel to the trend of 
the hills, but the strike is somewhat more to the north and the beds 
are cut off diagonally by the San Andreas fault, which passes along 
their south side,” as shown on sheet 27.” 
78 At the base of the Tertiary in this} 7 Noble, L. F., personal communica- 
Thermal. 
Coachella. 
Elevation —66 feet. 
Population 700.* 
New Orleans 1,869 
miles. 
fragments of the underlying schists. 
The material becomes finer grained 
farther away from the contact, the 
conglomerate ing laterally into 
sand and clay. This gradation is well 
exhibited in Shaver Canyon, east of 
Mecea, where near eimai Well see 
near-by ledges of at eBay pony 
tion. 
8 At the entrance to Shaver Canyon 
the beds of soft sandstone and clay dip 
turned in a — anticline, oe 
in Plate 40, 
the dip is bs ee northeast, and here 
the anticline is overturned, with ver- 
this anticline there is a broad basin, on 
