The McCoy 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 southeast terminus of the range lies adjacent the western edge of the

Parker Valley The Parker Valley is located along the Lower Colorado River within the Lower Colorado River Valley region, in southwestern Arizona and southeastern California. Its natural habitats are within the Sonoran Desert (Arizona) and Colorado Desert (Ca ...

in a southern stretch of the

Lower Colorado River Valley The Lower Colorado River Valley (LCRV) is the river region of the lower Colorado River of the southwestern United States in North America that rises in the Rocky Mountains and has its outlet at the Colorado River Delta in the northern Gulf of C ...

corridor.

Geography

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 south of the

Little Maria Mountains The Little Maria Mountains are located in southeastern California in the United States. The range lies in a northwest-southeasterly direction east of the Palen Mountains and west of the Big Maria Mountains. The mountain range is approximately 15 mi ...

. The mountain range is approximately 18 miles long and is located just 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 about seven miles northeast of Chuckawalla Valley State Prison. The mountains reach an elevation of 2,054 feet above sea level at McCoy Peak, at the southern end of the range. Downtown

Blythe, California Blythe is a city in eastern Riverside County, California, United States. It is in the Palo Verde Valley of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River, approximatel ...

is about 10 miles to the east.

Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area

The McCoy 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 Granite, McCoy, Palen, Little Maria, and

Arica Mountains The Arica Mountains are a small mountain range in northern Riverside County, California. The range lies along the south edge of Rice Valley southwest of the old Rice townsite on California State Route 62. They lie north of the Little Maria Mount ...

, 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, canyons and rugged peaks form a constantly changing landscape pattern. . accessed 6/24/2010 . 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

External links

*Official '
Palen-McCoy Wilderness Area website
''
BLM Palen-McCoy Wilderness Map

References

* {{authority control Mountain ranges of Riverside County, California Protected areas of Riverside County, California Mountain ranges of the Colorado Desert Protected areas of the Colorado Desert Mountain ranges of the Lower Colorado River Valley Wilderness areas within the Lower Colorado River Valley Bureau of Land Management areas in California Blythe, California

Geography

Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area

See also

External links

References