Altos de San Luis, also known as Monte Altos de San Luis (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

for '' San Luis heights''), is an 886 feet (270 m) high and two-mile-long prominent

mountain ridge A ridge or a mountain ridge is a geographical feature consisting of a chain of mountains or hills that form a continuous elevated crest for an extended distance. The sides of the ridge slope away from the narrow top on either side. The line ...

located on the northern edge of the

Caguas Valley Caguas Valley (Spanish: ''Valle de Caguas''), or the Caguas-Juncos Valley and popularly referred to as the Turabo Valley (Spanish: ''Valle del Turabo''), is a large valley lying between the Central Mountain Range and the Sierra de Luquillo in the ...

, in ''

barrio ''Barrio'' () is a Spanish language, Spanish word that means "Quarter (urban subdivision), quarter" or "neighborhood". In the modern Spanish language, it is generally defined as each area of a city, usually delimited by functional (e.g. residenti ...

'' (district) Bairoa of

Caguas, Puerto Rico Caguas (, ) is a city and municipality of Puerto Rico located in the Central Mountain Range of Puerto Rico, south of San Juan and Trujillo Alto, west of Gurabo and San Lorenzo, and east of Aguas Buenas, Cidra, and Cayey. Caguas was founded ...

. The ridge is bordered by the Loíza River to the north and the east, and it forms part of a larger system of mountain ridges that extends from the southwestern end of the

Sierra de Luquillo The Sierra de Luquillo is a mountain range located in the northeastern part of Puerto Rico. Also known as the Luquillo Mountains, these are steep-sided, densely-forested mountains rising to elevations of around , the highest point being the summit ...

in Gurabo to the northeastern end of the Cordillera Central in Aguas Buenas. Other mountains and hills along this system include the

Altos de La Mesa Altos may refer to: *Altos (Mygdonia), a town of ancient Greece *Altos (Paraguay) * Altos, Brazil, a municipality in Piauí **Associação Atlética de Altos, a football team in the municipality of Altos * Los Altos (Jalisco), a geographic region in ...

and Cerro La Marquesa. These ridges are shaped by the Great Northern Puerto Rico fault zone (GNPRfz), an active

fault zone In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

which crosses the island diagonally from southeast to northwest. The forested area on the mountain ridge, known as ''Finca Longo'', is protected by the municipality of Caguas as a critical habitat of the Puerto Rican plain pigeon (''

Patagioenas inornata wetmorei ''Patagioenas'' is a genus of New World pigeons whose distinctness from the genus '' Columba'' was long disputed but ultimately confirmed. It is basal to the ''Columba''-''Streptopelia'' radiation. Their ancestors diverged from that lineage prob ...

''), locally known as the ''paloma sabanera'', which until the 1970s was on the brink of

extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

. This pigeon has been observed to nest, roost and feed on the habitat created by the

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

found here.

References

Mountains of Puerto Rico Caguas, Puerto Rico {{CaguasPR-geo-stub

See also

References