GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY. 
21 
as high as 1,600 feet. A common height for summits in these hills 
is 1,200 feet, 
A\ ide, shallow, filled valleys between the rolling summits are char¬ 
acteristic of the Solomon Hills, the soft valley filling being as a rule 
sharply cut along a meandering course by a miniature stream gorge 
that has been rapidly eroded. Many of these recent channels are 
deeper than they are wide. In the vicinity of La Zaca Creek on the 
east the Solomon Hills merge with these foothills, and the general 
topographic features are continued in them. The Solomon Hills 
owe their low outlines largely to their structural development rather 
than to their topographic maturity. It has been an area of building 
up as well as of wearing away, and the original topography, which 
reflected characteristically the folds of the sedimentary formations, 
has been obscured by further deposition and by the filling of valleys, 
in addition to alteration by erosion. 
LOS ALAMOS VALLEY. 
The incline of the Solomon Hills on the south is gradual down to 
the Los Alamos Valley. This valley extends from the region where 
the Solomon and Purisima hills coalesce in the foothills of the San 
Rafael Range a distance of about 27 miles to the coast, in a direction 
about N. 75° W. This, it will be noted, is much more westerly 
than the trend of the Santa Maria Valley. The Los Alamos Valley 
separates the two basin ranges—the Solomon and Purisima hills— 
and is a drainage feature of them alone. The average altitude at the 
summit of its watershed is from 1,000 to 1,300 feet; and the highest 
elevation that the watershed reaches anywhere is less than 2,000 feet. 
All the water from the higher surrounding regions that drains into 
the Santa Maria basin region escapes either into the Santa Maria 
Valley on the north or the Santa Ynez Valley on the south. 
PURISIMA IIILLS. 
The second of the two hill ranges is that of the Purisima Hills, which 
forms a definitely outlined structural and topographic unit spring¬ 
ing from the plateau region about Santa Ynez and the foothills of the 
San Rafael Range in the vertex of the triangular basin. It rises at 
that point in the shape of a number of strike ridges which run north¬ 
westward and then curve around to the west, coming together. For 
most of the distance to the ocean beyond this junction the range con¬ 
sists of a single ridge running parallel to the Los Alamos Valley. On 
the north it sends out lateral ridges that drop off rather abruptly into 
the Los Alamos Valley. These ridges are separated by fairly sharp 
V-shaped valleys, although some of the valleys have sides of more 
gentle slope and filled bottoms. A striking topographic feature is a 
