diller] TERRACES SOUTH OF CRESCENT CITY. 29 
On approaching the mouth of Klamath River the high front of the 
plateau retreats from the coast, leaving a terrace of very even crest, 
700 to 800 feet in height, extending to the sea cliff. From this level, on 
the road descending toward Wilson Creek, one sees a cove and valley, 
which he expects to be that of the Klamath River, and is disappointed 
and puzzled to find instead a lagoon and above it a broad, swampy 
valley leading over to Hunters Creek, and, a few miles farther on, to 
the Klamath River a short distance above its mouth. This broad 
valley is in line with the Klamath River above the mouth of Hunters 
Creek, and appears to have been the ancient valley of the Klamath, 
which then entered at what is now called False Klamath Cove. 
South of the river the coast road skirts the edge of a platform which 
rises to 700 feet, but smoke and fog prevented a view sufficiently 
extended to determine whether the terrace is a part of the pene- 
plain or is an ancient sea beach below the edge of that plain, the 
latter being much the more probable. The cutting off of the heads of 
the small streams which flowed from the coast toward the Klamath 
River, making in some cases notches 350 feet deep in the crest of the 
sea cliff, is convincing evidence of the advance of the sea upon the 
land. It is probable that the steep slope facing the sea is a fault scarp 
connecting with the faulting along the coast north of the mouth of 
the Klamath, with which it is parallel. 
A flat-topped hill marks the 700-foot level by the road south of Red- 
wood Creek, and affords a fine but limited view of this extensive 
slightly rolling plain. Beyond, the coast is bordered by a remarkable 
series of lagoons along the rather irregular edge of higher terraces. 
At Patricks Point a narrow coastal plain comes in again and continues, 
with some variation in width and altitude, to Mad River, where it is 
succeeded by the broad lowland of Humboldt Bay. 
The plateau front marked by the Klamath peneplain at least 12 
miles inland from this portion of the coast has an altitude of about 
3,000 feet. The seaward slope of the low plain about Humboldt Bay 
is terraced, but being cut by many streams its continuity is inter- 
rupted and few terraces are prominent. On Lower Mad River the 
principal terraces rise from 200 to over 500 feet. Near the mouth of 
Eel River a terrace is marked at 600 to 700 feet ; this terrace is suc- 
ceeded farther inland by another at nearly a thousand feet, and this 
by a still higher one almost 2,000 feet above tide. The last two are 
developed on the north slope of Bear Ridge. From the mouth of Eel 
River to San Francisco the terraces of the abrupt coast have been 
described by Prof. A. C. Lawson, 1 who reports that the most pro- 
nounced and persistent terrace along the southern portion of the 
Humboldt County coast is that which appears very constantly between 
900 and 1,000 feet. 
If now we compare the terraces along the coast from the Umpqua 
1 Bull. Dopt. Geol. Univ. California, Vol. I, p. 249. 
