California has already broken off Mexico. Cabo San Lucas was attached to the Puerto Viarta
area. The Gulf of California has widened substantially due to the numerous volcanic eruptions
along this segment of the East Pacific Rise. The mostly granitic Penninsular Ranges, from
Cabo San Lucas to San Jacinto have moved northwest and forced weaker Tertiary marine
sediments and some older rock sequences to fold and break up (Normal and thrust faults).
Most of the western portions of Southern California have already faulted off along the Newport-
Inglewood and Malibu Faults, and submerged. All that remains is Palos Verdes and a
few Channel Islands. These tectonics have created some spectacular mountain scenery
such as Big Bear, great beaches such as Santa Monica and some very rich oil fields,
such as Signal Hill...
Just Another Sunny Day!
California has already crashed back in! Yes, Mt. San Jacinto, 11,000 ft. high at Palm Springs, the highest point on the Penninsular Ranges, is like the bow of a huge ship (Stern is at
Cabo) that has run aground into Mt. San Gorgonio, also 11,000 feet high and directly
acrosss the San Andreas Fault at San Gorgonio Pass. This is one of the world's greatest plate
tectonic collision zones. It may also be the most narrowly focused and dangerous. Huge alluvial
fans thousands of feet thick have covered the fault zone in many places such as at Indio,
Whitewater and Banning. An ancient Persian saying about earthquakes really applies to this area...
"The mountains shall become sand and the sand shall become mountains!"
The fault has become locked up here because of the impact and the geometric difficulty of
trying to move such a "Ship" around this bend of the San Andreas Fault. The strain accumulates
to tremendously dangerous proportions before it can be relieved catastrophically. The accumulated strain is calculated by taking the estimated annual movement along the other portions of the San Andreas Fault, approx. 4 centimeters per year, and multiplying it by the estimated time since the last quake on the southern section of the fault. 4 cm. X 500 = 2000 cm., or 66 feet! The Alaskan quake, the largest ever recorded, had offsets of 35 feet horizontal and 15 feet verticle...
It was a Richter 8.6 !
An interesting speculation has been suggested reguarding this impact. The original map of
California drawn by the Spanish in 1510 shows California as an island, a sea passage through San Gorgonio Pass? Did it close up during the last big quake? Peat bogs under the gravels in the pass and San Bernardino suggest at least some water. The date of this closure is actually about ...
50 to 100 thousand years ago!
West of the Salton Sea, the old white calcareous Gulf shoreline along the base of the
dark colored Santa Rosa Mtns. is a very distinct warning. The Gulf of California was cut off about
800 years ago by a (Quake related?) shift of the Colorado River Delta, and the Imperial
Valley dried up. (The Salton Sea was created by accident during construction of the All American
Canal at the Colorado River in 1904, otherwise the valley would still be dry). The megaquake could cause enough liquifaction of the delta, combined with a Gulf tidal wave, to reflood the lower desert. The Salton Sea has many geologic and geothermal features similar to the ones that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah on the Dead Sea...
Remember, Don't Look Back!