Old Mines of Southern California: Desert-Mountain-Coastal Areas Including the Calico-Salton Sea Colorado River Districts and Southern CountiesFairbanks, Harold W. (Harold Wellman)
History
Old Mines of Southern California: Desert-Mountain-Coastal Areas Including the Calico-Salton Sea Colorado River Districts and Southern Counties
Fairbanks, Harold W. (Harold Wellman)
Geology -- California, Southern; Mines and mineral resources -- California, Southern
and quartz, are abundant on the eastern slope.
Before reaching Jacumba Valley a body of mica and hornblende schist is
encountered. The schists do not form a regularly defined belt, but often
appear as inclusions in the granite. These inclusions have a very
variable strike, and from their relation to the granite it is evident
that the latter is intrusive.
Jacumba Valley empties northward into the desert through a narrow gorge.
It has an elevation of 2,600 feet, the same as that of Campo. It is
several square miles in extent, the greater part of which is in Lower
California. The warm springs here are considered quite medicinal. The
schists just described occupy a large area west and north of the cañon
through which the valley empties. They are cut in every direction by
dikes of granite and others, consisting of a very coarse aggregate of
quartz and feldspar with a little muscovite mica. A high mountain
several miles north of the valley is distinctly ribbed all over by them.
The schists extend northward toward those which outcrop on the eastern
slope of the Laguna Mountains and at Julian, but are cut off by a body
of intrusive granite. They undoubtedly belong to the same series.
Gold-bearing veins have been found in them a little north of Jacumba
Valley.
At the north end of Jacumba Valley, and on the west side of the outlet,
is an area of volcanic rock, probably basalt. It forms a table-land,
gently sloping toward the valley, and rising 600 or 700 feet at its
northern end. It is underlaid by gravels and conglomerates. Just east of
this is a black butte, rising perfectly symmetrical to the same height.
It consists of bedded lavas, with tufa at the bottom. In spite of the
fact that it is shaped like a crater, its structure is different, and it
is probably a remnant of the flow which once covered the outlet to the
valley.
The high range of mountains between Jacumba Valley and the desert has an
altitude of something over 4,000 feet, but where the road crosses it, it
is only 3,100 feet. Basalt outcrops also on the eastern side of the
valley. North of the road to Mountain Springs it forms a series of
plateaus, the highest of which reaches a height of 3,900 feet. It forms
the summit of the range, being 800 feet above the granite forming the
pass. South of the pass several miles the granite rises much higher and
the lava lies along its western slope, extending an unknown distance
below the line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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