22 Adventures in Scenery 



rado River is to be conveyed to Los Angeles and southern 

 California. 



To the west of Palm Springs is San Gorgonio Pass, discovered 

 in 1853, and hailed as the long looked for pass through the 

 mountains by which a railroad from the east might reach the 

 Pacific Coast. To the north is San Gorgonio Peak, at the east- 

 ern end of the San Bernardino range, and to the south is the 

 majestic Mount San Jacinto. The "pass" is a mountain valley 

 formed by faulting of the rocks of the earth's crust. This break 

 in the crust of the earth is the great San Andreas rift, which 

 extends south and east of San Gorgonio Pass and north and west 

 to and beyond San Francisco. Movement along this rift farther 

 northwest, particularly near San Francisco, caused the earth- 

 quake of April 18, 1906. Many faults or breaks in the crust 

 of the earth occur in this region. The Morongo Valley, which 

 separates the San Bernardino mountain range from the Little 

 San Bernardino range, is a "mountain valley" formed by fault- 

 ing. The fault of this latter valley is crosswise of the original 

 drainage of Little, Big, and Dry Morongo creeks, which enter 

 the valley from the San Bernadino mountains from the north- 

 west. The waters of these creeks sink into the alluvium of the 

 valley and the streams disappear, re-appearing again at the lower 

 side of the valley and then flow over the rock-bottomed gorges to 

 the Colorado Desert. The walls of Morongo Canyon are about 

 300 feet high and are nearly vertical. The rock walls are com- 

 posed of granitic gneiss beautifully laminated and very much 

 distorted, twisted, and folded. The broad plain between "White- 

 water River and Morongo Canyon is known as Conchilla Desert. 

 It is thickly covered with many varieties of cactus, especially 

 the large picturesque barrel cactus, and for this reason it has 

 been labeled the Devil's Garden! Probably more cactuses, or 

 more species of cactus, are observable here than anywhere else 

 on the Colorado Desert. A Joshua Tree National Monument 

 has been established in the Morongo Valley. It is worthy of 

 note that a movement is on foot to establish a Joshua Tree park 



