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
A long, high ridge running northwest and southeast, adjoining the lava,
is very interesting. It is about 200 feet higher, and covered with dense
brush, as is all the country in this vicinity. The greater part of the
hill is formed of a coarse tuff, whose fragments stand out in sharp
relief on the surface of the huge projecting, bowlder-like masses. The
matrix, which is darker and softer, weathers out, leaving the surface of
the rock covered with a great variety of fragments. Some are scoriaceous
or amygdaloidal, others are very coarsely crystalline and porphyritic
with feldspar or hornblende. Some of the fragments are themselves
tufaceous, containing large masses of hornblende in a dioritic matrix.
On the southern end of the hill, a great variety of dikes intersect the
tufa. This is in all probability the neck of an old volcano, but appears
to have no relation to the modern lavas near it. Owing to the exceeding
difficulty of traversing these hills, the exact relations of the
formations were not ascertained. About 10 miles east of Temecula, near
the point where the creek takes a turn to the southeast and enters a
cañon, there has been another lava eruption, but the time at my disposal
did not permit me to examine it. A great variety of rocks are exposed
along the road from Elsinore to Menifee Valley. For nearly 2 miles east
of the station the rock is a white, glassy diorite, with an excess of
feldspar. At the point where the road crosses the railroad, metamorphic
schists appear. The rock is a fine, dark mica felsite. It is so compact
that it breaks with a conchoidal fracture. A great irregularity in
strike and dip exists; the average strike is a little west of north, dip
northeast. As far as the top of the grade, the rocks are in part
metamorphic and part dioritic. There are many dikes; some fine-grained
granites, others micaceous diorite porphyrites. The hills along the west
side of Menifee Valley seem to be mostly metamorphic, with some bunches
and veins of granite.
All of the mountainous region lying south of the road from Temecula to
San Jacinto is granite or diorite, excepting a strip of micaceous schist
and gneisses near Glen Oak Valley. These strike northwest toward
Menifee.
No opportunity was given me to examine the mountainous regions comprised
in the San Jacinto range. The line of hills lying northeast of the town
and having a northwest direction are composed largely of gneiss and mica
schist, with some bodies of white crystalline limestone. In the line of
strike these hills finally disappear north of San Jacinto Lake, under
Quaternary clays and gravels, which form rather an abrupt rise from the
San Jacinto Valley and extend northerly to the San Bernardino Mountains.
The deposits show a great deal of disturbance. A part of them may be
Tertiary. Dikes of dark, heavy diabase and diorite are common about the
sulphur springs north of San Jacinto.
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