CHAPTER XVII 

 MOUNTAINS OF THE SOUTH 



The Mountains of California Most 

 Complicated in Structure 



Southern California is marked by many mountain ranges. 

 Probably it would not be far from the truth to say that the 

 most complicated mountain structures in any part of North 

 America, or indeed of the world, occur in California. The 

 central part of the southern one-third of the State is a sort of 

 focus of mountain ranges, a point from which many ranges 

 radiate. The Tehachapi Range is generally regarded as mark- 

 ing the southern end of the Sierra Nevada Range. From the 

 Tehachapi Range the system of Coast Ranges extends west and 

 north. South of the Tehachapi Range is a broken mountain- 

 ous region, to the east of which is the Mojave Desert, also broken 

 by many irregularly distributed mountain ranges. In a general 

 way transverse to the State lie the San Gabriel and San Bernar- 

 dino ranges, the former extending west from Cajon Pass to the 

 Santa Clara River; the latter extending east and south from 

 Cajon Pass, and separating the Mojave and Colorado deserts. 

 The Santa Monica Range lies south of and generally parallel 

 with the San Gabriel Range, northwest of Los Angeles. A vast 

 area lying between the Los Angeles Basin and the San Diego 

 Coastal Plain on the west, and the great basin of the Colorado 

 Desert, including the Imperial Valley, on the east, is a broken 

 mountainous plateau, the continuation of the Peninsular Range, 

 which forms the axis of the peninsula of Lower California, and 

 extends 100 miles into California, including the Santa Ana 

 Mountains on the west and the San Jacinto Range on the east. 

 Connecting the ranges of the Peninsular system with the trans- 

 verse ranges of the San Bernardino, the San Gabriel, and the 



