274 Adventures in Scenery 



and east by ranges of mountains and hills, elevated and in- 

 tricately folded and faulted, composed of rocks ranging in age 

 from Triassic to Pliocene. These adjoining upland areas re- 

 ceived most of their present elevation as a result of crustal 

 movement during the Quaternary period. The surface forma- 

 tions of the Los Angeles Basin are of Quaternary age, in part 

 land laid deposits (terrestrial) and in part marine, laid down 

 as sediments when a shallow sea covered the land. 



Deformation, that is, upheaval, warping and breaking of 

 the rocks of the earth's crust, occurred in Quaternary time, and 

 as a result most of the anticlines and faults in the rocks of the 

 basin, as exposed at the surface, are elongated low hills of late 

 Pleistocene rocks. In many places these are marked by promi- 

 nent scarps or cliffs of more or less ragged rock. The Baldwin 

 Hills (Inglewood), Dominquez Hill, and Signal Hill (Long 

 Beach) are examples of such anticlinal hills. 



The dominating landscape feature of the northern Los 

 Angeles Basin is the Elysian Park hills. This region is struc- 

 turally an anticline. It is an elongated dome the rocks of 

 which on the southwest dip gently to the southwest under the 

 Los Angeles basin, but slope abruptly to the Los Angeles River 

 on the northeast. 



Folds and Faults in the Rocks 



Running in a generally northwest direction across the basin 

 are folds or arches of the rocks. Two major lines of anticlinal 

 folding in the Los Angeles Basin are known as the Newport- 

 Inglewood-Beverly Hills uplift and the Coyote uplift. The 

 former is generally considered to have resulted from movement 

 along a deep-seated fault extending from Newport Beach 

 northwestward across the basin to Beverly Hills and the Santa 

 Monica Mountains. These major lines and adjoining ones of 

 lesser magnitude contain 17 oil fields, most of which are on 

 more or less perfectly formed anticlinal folds (H. W. Hoots). 



The basinward dipping rocks along the northern and north- 



