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| | Resources of the local region | |  |  |  |  | Information about our California state :
| State Nickname |
The Golden State |
| State Motto |
Eureka (I have found it) |
| State Song |
"I Love You, California" |
| State Bird |
California valley quail (Lophortyx californica) |
| State Mammal |
Grizzly bear |
| State Marine Mammal |
Gray whale |
| State Reptile |
Desert tortoise |
| State Insect |
California dog-face butterfly |
| State Fish |
Golden trout |
| State Marine Fish |
Garibaldi |
| State Flower |
California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) |
| State Tree |
Redwood - Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and Giant
redwood (S. gigantea). The redwood is the tallest tree, growing up to 370
feet (113 m) tall and living for over a thousand years. One redwood in
California is 2,200 years old. The roots of this giant conifer is shallow,
but spread sideways up to 250 feet (75 meters) from the trunk. The bark is
deeply-furrowed, fibrous, thick [up to about 1 foot (30.5 cm) thick] and
lacks resin. There are many species of redwood. |
| State Grass |
Purple Needle grass (Nassella pulchra) |
| State Fossil |
Smilodon fatalis (saber tooth tiger) |
| State Rock |
Serpentinite |
| State Mineral |
Gold |
| State Gem |
Benitoite |
The Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys are bordered by
numerous ranges of the Coast Mountains, running the entire length of the state
along the Pacific Ocean. The Colorado River forms its eastern border with
Arizona, while other significant rivers include the Sacramento and San Joaquin.
The Sierra Nevada Mountains extend along California's eastern border, and
include Mt Whitney, the state's highest point at 14, 494 ft, and the Sequoia
National Forest and Yosemite National Park. Death Valley, the Colorado and
Mohave Deserts and the Salton Sea are south and southeast. null | |  |  |  |  | |
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Early California History:
The earliest inhabitants of California were Indians who, unlike other North
American Indian groupings, had no centralized governmental structures.
Instead, each group had its own independent territorial and political units.
At the time of initial European exploration, the major language groupings in
the area were the Na-Denz, Hokan, Penutian, and Aztec-Tanoan. The region
received scant attention from Europeans for more than three centuries after
its first sighting in 1542 by the Spanish navigator Juan Cabrillo. The
Franciscan friar Junipero Serra established the first mission at San Diego
in 1769. The 21 missions established by Serra and his successors drew large
Indian populations and were centers for farming and ranching. In 1846,
American settlers at Sonoma seized control and proclaimed an independent
California republic. The discovery of gold in 1848 caused immediate,
extensive population growth, and in 1850, California became the 31st state.
California gets much of its water from groundwater. To
get groundwater, one needs only to sink a well above a suitable aquifer and
begin pumping. Historically, there has been control on the amount of
groundwater anyone could pump. This has led, in some areas, to people
pumping more water out of the aquifer than is replenished naturally or by
artificial recharge. This condition is known as overdraft. When an aquifer
has been severely over drafted, it physically loses that storage capacity
permanently. That is, it will never again be able to hold the pre-overdraft
amount of water.
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Problems associated with overdraft include:
Storage capacity drops -- leading to a permanent loss of supply,
Water levels fall -- necessitating deepening and possibly abandonment of
wells and higher pumping costs,
Land subsidence -- the surface elevation declines.
The Sacramento River hydrologic region contains the entire
drainage area of the Sacramento River and its tributaries. It begins upstream of
Shasta Lake near the Oregon boarder and extends south to the Sacramento-San
Joaquin Delta. The San Joaquin River hydrologic region contains the entire
drainage area of the San Joaquin and its tributaries. It extends from the Delta
and the Cosumnes River in the north to the southern reaches of the San Joaquin
watershed. The Tulare Lake Region includes the Southern San Joaquin Valley. It
ranges from the southern limit of the San Joaquin River watershed to the crest
of the Tehachapi Mountains.
Silicon Valley, bridging the San Jose and San Francisco
areas, has become a world leader in high technology products ranging from
computers to telecommunications and the Internet. California has a diverse set
of industries including agriculture, entertainment, oil, mining and high
technology manufacturing such as telecommunications, computers, and
biotechnology. The Digital Coast in southern California, around Los Angeles, has
become famous for motion pictures and the entertainment industry.
California also has many coastal redwood forests. The redwood
tree, California's state tree, is the tallest tree in the world, with many
reaching over 300 feet tall. Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, is 22
miles wide, and 72 miles around, at an altitude of 6,200 feet. It is best known
for its ability to create startup companies in emerging new industries. null | | | | | | |
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Mt. Shasta : One of
the first questions that people from out of town ask is, "Where
did the name 'Shasta' come from?" The four most common reasons
offered for our mountain's name are the following:
1. Our mountain is named after a very famous local Indian.
2. It is named after a local Indian tribe.
3. It comes from the Indian word Tsasdi, meaning 'three' and refers
to our triple-peaked mountain.
4. The Russians who settled at Bodega could see it from the Coast
Range. They called it Tchastal or "the white and pure mountain."
When Europeans first entered northern California in the
1820's, they found several small Indian tribes. The area north of Mount
Shasta was the territory of the Shasta Indians. These hunter-gathers lived
in small bands and were migratory. To the northeast lived the Klamath
Indians, a people who were primarily hunters, and noted for having made some
of the finest obsidian projectile points known. The area near Medicine Lake
is a source for obsidian, and this black glass was traded with other West
Coast tribes. Mount Shasta is a compound stratovolcano that has been built
by repeated eruptions during the past 200,000 years. Although the mountain
itself is relatively young, it has been built atop older basalts and
andesites whose ages indicate that volcanism has been taking place at the
site of the present cone for at least the past 600,000 years. |
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Ancestral Mount Shasta :
Pre-Shasta basalts form a number of shield volcanoes, such as Everett Hill and
Ash Creek Butte that stand just south and east of the mountain. A suite of
coeval andesites, which crop out on Mount Shasta's southwestern flank, are the
remnants of an earlier stratocone that stood on the site of the present mountain
until sometime between 360,000 and 160,000 years ago. The youngest rocks from
this "ancestral Mount Shasta", which yield a Potassium-Argon Date of 360,000
years, are found as blocks in the massive debris avalanche that blankets the
western Shasta Valley. Mapping of the avalanche deposit by Crandell and others
(1984) has shown that the avalanche flowed at least 43 kilometers northwestward
from the base of the Mount Shasta and contained at least 26 cubic kilometers of
material.
Sedimentary rocks incorporated into the avalanche deposit (Ui
and Glicken, 1986), and soft sediment injected into it along fractures, indicate
that marshy lake and stream deposits covered at least part of the Shasta Valley
when the avalanche swept across it. Following the collapse of the northern flank
of ancestral Mount Shasta, olivine basalt lavas flowed from a vent between, The
Whaleback and Deer Mountain and spread across the eastern Shasta Valley. These
basalts, which are about 160,000 years old buried the eastern part of the
avalanche deposit and formed several large lava tubes including Pluto and Barnum
Caves.
Like the Bell Rocks of Arizona, Mt. Shasta is the reputed
site of a spiritual "Energy Vortex". This Northern California volcano is well
known to the spiritual community and has been a place long-revered by Native
Americans. According to a legend, around the year 1821, a Spanish explorer
reported, that while climbing Mount Diablo near San Francisco saw Mount Shasta.
He called it "Jesus and Maria" because of the double peaks. About this time, the
Russians probably viewed Mount Shasta from the coast near Fort Ross.
Most of Mount San Jacinto State Park is wilderness,
containing three mountain peaks, higher than 10,000 feet in elevation. The
mountain peaks offer spectacular views of nearby desert and mountain ranges.
Visitors can drive into the park from the park's west side or ride a tram 2.5
miles up the mountain on the East side. The City of Mt. Shasta is nestled at the
foot of beautiful Mt. Shasta, the second highest volcano in the United States
and a major peak of the Cascade Range. Mt. Shasta is surrounded by natural
beauty and plenty of recreational activities.
There are about 25 million acres of desert in California and
Southern Nevada. That's a lot of territory filled with all kinds of things to
see and do. Death Valley National Park has more than 3.3 million acres of
spectacular desert scenery, interesting and rare desert wildlife, complex
geology, and undisturbed wilderness. Early maps portrayed today's Mount Shasta
variously as Mount Pitt, Mount Jackson, and Mount Simpson and said that it was
over 20,000 feet above sea level. null | | | | | | |
| | | | | | Yosemite is as beautiful
in winter as everyone says it is, and the valley had seen a lot of snow just a
few days before the autumn. Down in Yosemite Valley, at 4000 feet elevation, it
was too warm to see good crystals. Even at night, the snow is wet and gloppy.
Nearby Badger Pass, at 7000 feet elevation provided some good crystals, although
most were covered with rime. Simply stated, Yosemite Valley, only 7 miles long
and nearly 1 mile wide, is a flat-floored, widened part of the canyon of the
Merced River. Projecting boldly from the north wall, its top rises 3,000 feet
above the valley floor. Directly opposite stand the Cathedral Rocks, over 2,500
feet high, which also jut into the valley. Between the west end of this
promontory and the Leaning Tower, Bridal veil fall leaps 620 feet, its abundant
spray commonly suffused with rainbows. The Upper Fall, 1,430 feet high, would
alone make any valley famous; it is the highest unbroken leap of water on the
Continent. The Lower Fall, which descends 320 feet, seems insignificant by
comparison, yet it is twice as high as Niagara Falls. The entire chain of falls
and intermediate cascades drops 2,425 feet. Ribbon fall, west of El Capitan,
descends 1,612 feet, but it is confined in a sheer-walled recess and does not
make a clear leap throughout.
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For its towering cliffs, spectacular waterfalls, granite
domes and spires, glacially sculpted and polished rock, and beautiful alpine
scenery, Yosemite National Park is world famous. Nowhere else are all these
exceptional features so well displayed and so easily accessible. Artists,
writers, tourists, and geologists, flock to Yosemite, and marvel at its
natural wonders. Farther up the valley, on the north side, are the Royal
Arches, sculptured one within another into an inclined rock wall that rises
1,500 feet. Facing the Royal Arches on the south wall stands Glacier Point
providing a matchless view of the valley from its summit; this stands 3,200
feet above the valley floor. From its summit, over 4,800 feet above the
valley, you look southeast into Little Yosemite Valley, which is broad
floored and has granite walls more gently sloping than in its larger
namesake.
Yosemite National Park is a large national park in
Mariposa County, and Tuolumne County, California, United States. The park
covers an area of 1,189 mi2 (3,081 km2) and stretches across the western
slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Over 3 million people visit
Yosemite each year, with most only seeing Yosemite Valley. The park has an
elevation range from 2,000 to 13,123 feet (600 to 4000 m) and contains five
major vegetation zones: chaparral/oak woodland, lower montane, upper montane,
sub alpine and alpine. Of California's 7,000 plant species, about 50% occur
in the Sierra Nevada and more than 20% within Yosemite. |
From Little Yosemite's western portal, guarded by Liberty
Cap, the Merced River descends by a giant stairway, making two magnificent
waterfalls, Nevada Fall, dropping 594 feet, and Vernal Fall, dropping 317 feet.
Looking northward from Half Dome's summit, the view is into Tenaya Canyon, a
chasm as profound as Yosemite Valley itself, yet the pathway of only a small
brook. To the northeast, Clouds Rest, the loftiest summit near Yosemite Valley,
rises to 9,926 feet; beyond, spreads the vast panorama of the High Sierra.
Rose-colored sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones, Joshua tree forests, and
mile-high mountains are all part of the scene at Mojave National Preserve.
Located in the heart of the Mojave Desert, this new park was
established in 1994 through the California Desert Protection Act. The Preserve
encompasses 1.6 million acres of mountains, jumble rocks, desert washes, and dry
lakes; outdoor enthusiasts appreciate the opportunity for solitude here not
easily found at other southern California parks. The present Yosemite Valley is
the result of many different geologic processes operating over an
incomprehensible length of time measured in millions of years. The rock from
which the valley is carved originated mainly during the Cretaceous period, about
100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. At that time molten
rock, magma, generated deep within the Earth, rose upward within the Earth's
crust, or upper layer, and crystallized far beneath the surface to form granite
rock along a linear belt that was to become the future Sierra Nevada. null | | | | | | |
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