Bear River is the largest

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

coastal

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

between the

Mattole River The Mattole River is a river on the north coast of California, that flows northerly, then westerly into the Pacific Ocean. The vast majority of its course is through southern Humboldt County, though a short section of the river flows through no ...

and the Eel River. Bear River drains the ranch pastures and forests of

California Coast Ranges The Coast Ranges of California span from Del Norte or Humboldt County, California, south to Santa Barbara County. The other three coastal California mountain ranges are the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges and the Klamath Mountains. P ...

south of the Bear River Ridge extending easterly from False Cape along the False Cape

shear zone In geology, a shear zone is a thin zone within the Earth's crust or upper mantle that has been strongly deformed, due to the walls of rock on either side of the zone slipping past each other. In the upper crust, where rock is brittle, the shear ...

of the Russ Fault. The river channel through undivided

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

marine formations exposes younger

Neogene The Neogene ( ), informally Upper Tertiary or Late Tertiary, is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period million years ago ( Mya) to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period Mya. ...

, namely middle or lower

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58sedimentary Sedimentary rocks are types of rock (geology), rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic matter, organic particles at Earth#Surface, Earth's surface, followed by cementation (geology), cementation. Sedimentati ...

and

metasedimentary In geology, metasedimentary rock is a type of metamorphic rock. Such a rock was first formed through the deposition and solidification of sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and er ...

rocks near the mouth, but lacks the well defined offshore

submarine canyon A submarine canyon is a steep-sided valley cut into the seabed of the continental slope, sometimes extending well onto the continental shelf, having nearly vertical walls, and occasionally having canyon wall heights of up to 5 km, from c ...

s of the Eel River to the north and the Mattole River to the south. Bear River reaches the Pacific after flowing westerly approximately from elevations above along the ridge above the Bull Creek drainage of Humboldt Redwoods State Park. Bear River provides the recreational and industrial water supply for the community of

Capetown, California Capetown (formerly, Gas Jet and False Cape) is a locality in Humboldt County, California. It is located on the Bear River northeast of Cape Mendocino, at an elevation of . The Gas Jet post office operated from 1868 to 1876. The name referred to ...

, and wildlife habitat including cold freshwater habitat for fish migration and spawning. Bear River was named from the numerous bears seen there by early settlers. Alternatively, it was named after Lewis Keysor Wood of the Gregg party was mauled by a wounded bear near the river in 1850.

References

{{reflist

References

See also