Santa Cruz Mountains
   HOME
*





Santa Cruz Mountains
The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central and Northern California, United States. They form a ridge down the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco. They separate the Pacific Ocean from the San Francisco Bay and the Santa Clara Valley, and continue south to the Central Coast, bordering Monterey Bay and ending at the Salinas Valley. The range passes through the counties of San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey, with the Pajaro River forming the southern boundary. Geography The northernmost portion of the Santa Cruz Mountains, north of Half Moon Bay Road ( SR 92), is known as Montara Mountain; the middle portion is the Sierra Morena, which includes a summit called Sierra Morena, and extends south to a gap at Lexington Reservoir; south of the gap, the mountain range is known as the Sierra Azul. The highest point in the range is Loma Prieta Peak, west of Morgan Hill, with a height of , near the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Skyline Boulevard
A skyline is the outline or shape viewed near the horizon. It can be created by a city’s overall structure, or by human intervention in a rural setting, or in nature that is formed where the sky meets buildings or the land. City skylines serve as a pseudo-fingerprint as no two skylines are alike. For this reason, news and sports programs, television shows, and movies often display the skyline of a city to set a location. The term ''The Sky Line of New York City'' was first introduced in 1896, when it was the title of a color lithograph by Charles Graham for the color supplement of the ''New York Journal''. Paul D. Spreiregen, FAIA, has called a ityskyline "a physical representation f a city'sfacts of life ... a potential work of art ... its collective vista." Features High-rise buildings High-rise buildings, including skyscrapers, are the fundamental feature of urban skylines. Both contours and cladding (brick or glass) make an impact on the overall appearance of a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Santa Cruz County, California
Santa Cruz County (), officially the County of Santa Cruz, is a county on the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 270,861. The county seat is Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz County comprises the Santa Cruz–Watsonville, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area. The county is on the California Central Coast, south of the San Francisco Bay Area region. The county forms the northern coast of the Monterey Bay, with Monterey County forming the southern coast. History Santa Cruz County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. In the original act, the county was given the name of "Branciforte" after the Spanish pueblo founded there in 1797. A major watercourse in the county, Branciforte Creek, still bears this name. Less than two months later, on April 5, 1850, the name was changed to "Santa Cruz" ("Holy ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Mount Thayer
Mount Thayer is a mountain in the Santa Cruz mountain range located in Santa Clara County, California. The summit is in a section of the abandoned Almaden Air Force Station, about 1 mile west of Mount Umunhum. The elevation of the summit is at feet. An old derelict building, surrounded by telephone poles, is located on the summit. Mount Thayer, along with the surrounding property, is off limits to the public. See also * List of summits of the San Francisco Bay Area This is a list of named summits in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area that are more than above sea level. Note that there are no natural features above in the city of San Francisco. Unless otherwise referenced, all data are from the Geograp ... References External links * {{DEFAULTSORT:Thayer, Mount Mountains of Santa Clara County, California Mountains of the San Francisco Bay Area Santa Cruz Mountains Mountains of Northern California ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Mount Umunhum
Mount Umunhum (Ohlone languages, Ohlone for "Resting Place of the Hummingbird") is a peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, located in Santa Clara County, California, Santa Clara County, California. It is the fourth-highest Mountain, peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, after Loma Prieta, Crystal Peak (Santa Clara County, California), Crystal Peak, and Mount Chual, Mt. Chual. Most of the mountain is located within the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. Geology Mt. Umunhum consists of a Geological formation, geologic formation that is known as the ''Coast Range Ophiolite.'' This ophiolite is a piece of Middle Jurassic oceanic crust and Mantle (geology), mantle that has been obduction, obducted onto land and largely been converted to serpentinite. It has been extensively Fault (geology), faulted and diapirically Geologic uplift, uplifted and erosion, eroded to form Mt. Umunhum and extensive outcrop areas throughout the Santa Cruz Mountain foothills and elsewhere. The Coast Range Ophiolite is ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System and was named for the nearby Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. With an magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (''Violent''), the shock was responsible for 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault System had been relatively inactive since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (to the degree that it was designated a seismic gap) until two moderate foreshocks occurred in June 1988 and again in August 1989. Damage was heavy in Santa Cruz County and less so to the south in Monterey County, but effects extended well to the north into the San Francisco Bay Area, both on the San Francisco Peninsula and across the bay in Oakland. No surface faultin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Epicenter
The epicenter, epicentre () or epicentrum in seismology is the point on the Earth's surface directly above a hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or an underground explosion originates. Surface damage Before the instrumental period of earthquake observation, the epicenter was thought to be the location where the greatest damage occurred, but the subsurface fault rupture may be long and spread surface damage across the entire rupture zone. As an example, in the magnitude 7.9 Denali earthquake of 2002 in Alaska, the epicenter was at the western end of the rupture, but the greatest damage was about away at the eastern end. Focal depths of earthquakes occurring in continental crust mostly range from . Continental earthquakes below are rare whereas in subduction zone earthquakes can originate at depths deeper than . Epicentral distance During an earthquake, seismic waves propagate in all directions from the hypocenter. Seismic shadowing occurs on the opposite s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Morgan Hill, California
Morgan Hill is a city in Santa Clara County, California, at the southern tip of Silicon Valley, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Morgan Hill is an affluent residential community, the seat of several high-tech companies, and a dining, entertainment, and recreational destination, owing to its luxury hospitality, wineries, and nature parks. History Prior to the arrival of Spanish colonists, the area of the Santa Clara Valley had been inhabited by the Tamyen nation of Ohlone people for more than 6,000 years. In the area of what is now Morgan Hill, the Matalan tribe lived in a hunter-gatherer society. Before the area was colonized as part of the Alta California province of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the 1772 Spanish expedition, led by Pedro Fages and Father Juan Crespí, camped in what is now Morgan Hill, alongside Llagas Creek. The location of their camp subsequently became a popular campsite for Spanish soldiers on their way from New Spain to Alta California. With the founding ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Loma Prieta Peak
Loma Prieta (from Spanish ''loma'' -hill, ''prieta'' -dark) is high and is the highest peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California. Although the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was named for this mountain, the actual epicenter was five miles southwest of the peak, across the San Andreas fault, in the The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. In the 19th century, the peak was called Mount Bache, a name given in honor of Alexander Dallas Bache; the name is no longer in use. From 1955 to 2005, the mountain was the longtime site for the transmitter tower of San Jose television station KNTV. In September 2005, it moved its transmitter northwest to San Bruno Mountain after it became the Bay Area's NBC affiliate. Geology Loma Prieta is the tallest peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains and it is common to see snow on the mountain during the winter. Loma Prieta and other nearby mountain peaks are pushed upward by local collision forces associated with a left bend in the San An ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Sierra Azul
The Sierra Azul is a mountain range in Santa Clara County, California. It is the southern half of the Santa Cruz Mountains range, which is divided into two parts by California Highway 17 into what the colonizing Spanish called the Sierra Morena or "Brown Mountains" to the north and the Sierra Azul or "Blue Mountains" to the south. Part of the range is within the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. The highest peak is Mount Umunhum, the site of the former Almaden Air Force Station radar site and the current location of a NEXRAD weather radar of the National Weather Service which serves the San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Bay Area. References External links Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve website— ''part of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District Formed in 1972 by voter initiative, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) is a non-enterprise special district in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has acquired and preserved a regional green belt of open s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lexington Reservoir
Lexington Reservoir is an artificial lake on the Los Gatos Creek near Los Gatos, California. The James J. Lenihan Dam, a high, thick earthen dam, forms the third-largest reservoir in Santa Clara County. Background The reservoir is in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, at an elevation of . State Route 17 runs alongside the dam's western edge and over part of the reservoir. Alma Bridge Road (Limekiln Canyon Road) runs around the eastern side, connecting with 17 at the north end and again at the south end via other surface streets. The reservoir is contained in Lexington Reservoir County Park, which includes hiking trails in the hills with good views of the reservoir and of Silicon Valley. The Los Gatos Creek Trail starts at the dam and continues downstream along the creek's canyon. It is part of the Santa Clara Valley Water District and provides water for Silicon Valley. History In 1943, because of the rapid expansion of orchards in the county, the Santa Clar ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Montara Mountain
Montara Mountain, positioned between the unincorporated community of Montara, California, to the southwest and the city of Pacifica, California, to the north, forms the northern spur of the Santa Cruz Mountains, a narrow mountain range running the length of the San Francisco Peninsula that separates San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean.VanderWerf, p. 7. Its highest point rises to above sea level. Montara and Pacifica are connected by the Tom Lantos Tunnels, which run through the Mountain. History The earliest historical trail remnant of Montara Mountain is the prehistoric Indian Trail which traverses the ridgeline between Willow Brook Estates towards Saddle Pass following the high ridgeline above Green Valley and winding down towards Martini Creek. Remnants of this trail remain visible today. Colonial history The earliest descriptions of the area are from the Portolá Expedition in 1769, "We halted near the shore, along which the passage was entirely closed by a stee ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

California State Route 92
State Route 92 (SR 92) is a state highway in the U.S. state of California, serving as a major east-west corridor in the San Francisco Bay Area. From its west end at State Route 1 in Half Moon Bay near the coast, it heads east across the San Francisco Peninsula and the San Mateo–Hayward Bridge to downtown Hayward in the East Bay at its junction with State Route 238 and State Route 185. It has interchanges with three freeways: Interstate 280 (the Junipero Serra Freeway), U.S. Route 101 (the Bayshore Freeway) in or near San Mateo, and Interstate 880 (the Nimitz Freeway) in Hayward. It also connects indirectly to Interstates 238 and 580 by way of Hayward's Foothill Boulevard, which carries Route 238 and flows directly into Route 92. Route description Between Half Moon Bay and Interstate 280, Route 92 winds through the Coast Range as a narrow, mainly undivided two and three lane highway with a switchback turn. The east-bound uphill portion was upgraded with a long passin ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]