Transverse Ranges

The Transverse Ranges get their name from the peculiar way they jog across the grain of almost all the other major mountain ranges in the state. The vast majority of the Golden State’s mountains generally run in a southeast to northwest orientation. As you might suspect, many of California’s fault lines also share this alignment.

But California’s most famous fault line, the San Andreas, bucks this trend slightly. Emerging in the Salton Trough from a spreading zone, the San Andreas at first trends northwest towards Desert Hot Springs. But not long after it takes a gentle left turn towards a more WNW bearing. Many of its subsidiary faults take a harder left and align themselves in a westerly fashion. As a result the Transverse Ranges trend in a east-west direction. This has a significant impact on the coastal plains of southern California. They are, in effect, cut off from the rest of the state by imposing mountains.

Mountain Bikes and Mountain Lions

Few urban areas in the United States can claim to harbor mountain lions within their city limits. But varied topography, combined with relatively large open spaces, allows Los Angeles to declare that distinction. For the most part, lions and people currently coexist peacefully in this urban environment. But the remnant population of lions here is small. And despite ongoing and extensive preservation efforts, lions continue to succumb from direct and indirect encounters with people. Collisions with automobiles and death from eating prey that have ingested rat poison are the biggest threats to their continued survival in these ranges.

Spanish Armada

On this particularly clear day we can see the Anacapa Island and even Santa Barbara Island on the horizon, the latter being almost 40 miles off the coast. Visible in the foreground are the oil platforms located in the Santa Barbara Channel. Locals refer to derricks by a humorously derisive label: The Spanish Armada. Jokes aside, it was the fouling on these waters during a 1969 oil spill that helped give rise to the environmental movement.

Transverse Transition

Natural boundary lines are rarely as defined as this abrupt transition between forest and desert communities here in the eastern end of the San Bernardino Mountains. However, a demarcation line such as this will be influenced by many factors including; elevation, prevailing wind patterns, topography, geology, fires and anthropogenic factors.

Over the San Gabriel Mountains

Here we see a late winter storm starting to break up over the San Gabriel Mountains.

Gold Coast

Past Santa Barbara, settlement thins out quickly and the coast becomes far more undeveloped. Though you still have to turn inland and traverse the Gaviota Pass to "officially" cross into the central coast region, this narrow strip of the westernmost Transverse Ranges shares more in common with the lands to the north than it does to the metropolitan areas to the south.

« ‹ 1 of 6 › »