The Little Maria Mountains are located in southeastern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The range lies in a northwest-southeasterly direction east of the

Palen Mountains The Palen Mountains are located in the southern Mojave Desert – northern Colorado Desert in eastern Riverside County, California, US. The range lies southeast of the Coxcomb Mountains, and northeast of the Chuckwalla Mountains near Interstat ...

and west of the

Big Maria Mountains The Big Maria Mountains are located in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of California, near the Colorado River and Arizona. The range lies between Blythe and Vidal, and west of U.S. Route 95 in California and east of Midland. The mountains ...

. The mountain range is approximately 15 miles long and is located about 12.6 miles north of

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost cross-country highway in the American Interstate Highway System. I-10 is the fourth-longest Interstate in the United States at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. This freeway is part of the originally pl ...

, and 12 miles southwest of the abandoned Rice Army Airfield near State Route 62. The Victor Mine is found at the southeastern end of the range near Midland.

Geology

The Little Maria Mountains are one of several ranges that constitute the Maria Fold and Thrust Belt. The Maria Fold and Thrust Belt underwent generally thick-skinned (involving

basement rocks In geology, basement and crystalline basement are crystalline rocks lying above the mantle and beneath all other rocks and sediments. They are sometimes exposed at the surface, but often they are buried under miles of rock and sediment. The baseme ...

) North-South trending crustal shortening in the

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 ...

. The structures of the MFTB are exposed by later generally East-West trending large-scale crustal extension in the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

, through what is known to geologists as the

Colorado River Extensional Corridor Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

. This North-South shortening is anomalous, as crustal shortening in the rest of the

North American Cordillera The North American Cordillera, sometimes also called the Western Cordillera of North America, the Western Cordillera or the Pacific Cordillera, is the North American portion of the American Cordillera, the mountain chain system (cordillera) alon ...

is oriented generally East-West because of the generally East-West compression that was due to the subduction of the

Farallon plate The Farallon Plate was an ancient oceanic plate. It formed one of the three main plates of Panthalassa, alongside the Phoenix Plate and Izanagi Plate, which were connected by a triple junction. The Farallon Plate began subducting under the west c ...

under western North America. Also unlike the rest of the North American Cordillera, deformation in the Maria Fold and Thrust Belt involved rocks of the

North American Craton North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

, most notably the Grand Canyon sequence of sedimentary rocks.

Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area

The Little Maria Mountains are in th
Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area
managed by the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

. Within the Palen-McCoy Wilderness are the Little Maria, Granite,

Arica Arica ( ; ) is a Communes of Chile, commune and a port city with a population of 222,619 in the Arica Province of northern Chile's Arica y Parinacota Region. It is Chile's northernmost city, being located only south of the border with Peru. The ...

, Palen, and

McCoy Mountains The McCoy Mountains are located in southeastern California in the United States. The southeast terminus of the range lies adjacent the western edge of the Parker Valley in a southern stretch of the Lower Colorado River Valley corridor. Geography ...

, which are five distinct mountain ranges separated by broad sloping

Alluvial fan An alluvial fan is an accumulation of sediments that fans outwards from a concentrated source of sediments, such as a narrow canyon emerging from an escarpment. They are characteristic of mountainous terrain in arid to semiarid climates, but a ...

s-bajadas. Because this large area incorporates so many major geological features, the diversity of vegetation and

landform A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, ...

s is exceptional. The desert wash woodland found here provides food and cover for burro deer, coyote,

bobcat The bobcat (''Lynx rufus''), also known as the red lynx, is a medium-sized cat native to North America. It ranges from southern Canada through most of the contiguous United States to Oaxaca in Mexico. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUC ...

, gray fox, and

mountain lion The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. I ...

Desert pavement A desert pavement, also called reg (in the western Sahara), serir (eastern Sahara), gibber (in Australia), or saï (central Asia) is a desert surface covered with closely packed, interlocking angular or rounded rock fragments of pebble and cob ...

, bajadas, interior valleys, canyons, dense ironwood forests-(''

Olneya tesota ''Olneya tesota'' is a perennial flowering tree of the family Fabaceae, legumes (peas, beans, etc.), which is commonly known as ironwood, desert ironwood, or palo fierro in Spanish. It is the only species in the monotypic genus ''Olneya''. This t ...

''), canyons, and rugged peaks, form a constantly changing landscape pattern.http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/palmsprings/wilderness/palen-mccoy.html . accessed 3/4/2016 . BLM

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

sourced

References

External links

* Officia
Palen-McCoy Wilderness Area website

BLM Palen-McCoy Wilderness Map

Mountain ranges of the Colorado Desert Protected areas of the Colorado Desert Protected areas of the Mojave Desert Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert Mountain ranges of Riverside County, California Protected areas of Riverside County, California Bureau of Land Management areas in California Blythe, California {{RiversideCountyCA-geo-stub