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
The fragments are chiefly granite and an aphanitic rock. They are quite
angular, showing only a slight rounding of the corners. Some of the
larger fragments are a foot in diameter. The boundaries are very
irregular. Long arms of the inclosing granite project into the breccia.
The base or matrix varies from a coarse syenitic rock to an aphanite. It
often seems to present a blending of different kinds of fragments.
Besides the large inclusions there are scattered through the matrix
small angular pieces, which are so regular in outline and distribution
as to give to the rock the appearance of a porphyritic structure. The
granite in the hills west of the valley contains much biotite and quartz
in long, rounded grains, presenting a pseudo-porphyritic aspect. This
appearance is characteristic of much of the granite of this section.
Imbedded in the granite are masses of dark aphanitic rock. The lower
granite hills are covered with considerable sandy soil. There are
isolated peaks of a coarse white granite, much like that of the Sierra
Nevada, arranged in some sort of regularity in north and south lines.
One rugged peak of this coarse granite rises 2,500 feet west of the
valley. At the northern end of the valley the bedding planes in the
finer grained granites are very regular; strike north 45° west, dip 65°
southwest. There is, however, no schistose structure present.
A half mile above the warm springs is another conglomerate or tuff,
which seems so related to the granite that the latter must really be
eruptive. In a little valley southwest of De Luz and just east of the
Santa Margarita grant there is a large outcrop of diabase. It has been
intruded in a fine-grained, jointed granite. Farther down the valley, on
the road to De Luz Station, there is a narrow outcrop of black quartz
feldspar porphyry, followed on the east by a dark felsitic mica schist;
strike northwest, dip 60° southwest. Immediately west of the deep canons
which lead down to De Luz Creek, rises the Santa Margarita Mountains.
They consist of a fine-grained granite, verging at times on a quartz
porphyry. The main crest is 2 miles long, the highest peak of which is
nearly 3,200 feet. The rock is perfectly massive, but shows apparent
bedding planes; strike north 30° west, dip 80° northeast. The
porphyritic facies of this formation occur in the western slope. On the
western slope of the main range, at an altitude of 2,500 feet, there is
a plateau-like area of a thousand acres or more of fine grass land. It
is dotted with white oak trees. The western slope of this plateau is
very abrupt and brushy. The formation is partly porphyry and partly dark
diabase and diorite. The most interesting fact connected with the Santa
Margarita range is the occurrence of sandstone at an elevation of 2,600
feet on its western slope. The sandstone occupies very limited detached
areas in the heads of the gulches, and is evidently the remnant of a
once far more extensive formation.
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