Mount Toro is a mountain peak in the

Santa Lucia range The Santa Lucia Mountains (sæntə luˈsiːə) or Santa Lucia Range is a rugged mountain range in coastal central California, running from Carmel southeast for to the Cuyama River in San Luis Obispo County. The range is never more than from t ...

Monterey County, California Monterey County ( ), officially the County of Monterey, is a county located on the Pacific coast in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, its population was 439,035. The county's largest city and county seat is Salinas. Monte ...

. Mount Torosa

Geonames.org (cc-by) GeoNames (or GeoNames.org) is a user editable geographical database available and accessible through various web services, under a Creative Commons attribution license. The project was founded in late 2005. The GeoNames dataset differs from ...

post updated February 19, 2010; database download sa February 28, 2017 It is located within the boundaries of

Los Padres National Forest Los Padres National Forest is a United States national forest in Southern California, southern and central California. Administered by the United States Forest Service, Los Padres includes most of the mountainous land along the California coast ...

. The name comes from the word "Toro," which in Spanish means "Bull". The highest point in the area is the

Sierra de Salinas Sierra de Salinas is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges, located in central Monterey County, California. The range is a part of the Salinian Block and lies between the Santa Lucia Range to the west and the Salinas Valley, Salinas Rive ...

mountain range, above sea level, southeast of Mount Toro and above the surrounding terrain. There are about 16 people per square kilometer around Mount Toro. The land around Mount Toro is mountainous. The nearest town is Salinas, north of Mount Toro. The area around Mount Toro is covered with dirt and mud. Mount Toro is a place Monterey County residents’ hike to the top to take advantage of the snow and views during the winter months. It is a five-mile hike from Dorrance Ranch. Sleds and toboggans can be taken down Toro's slopes. For some, it can be the first opportunity to see and feel real snow. Magnificent views can be seen of the entire shoreline of

Monterey Bay Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean located on the coast of the U.S. state of California, south of the San Francisco Bay Area and its major city at the south of the bay, San Jose. San Francisco itself is further north along the coast, by a ...

, the Corral de Tierra basin, Monterey, Watsonville, Castroville, Salinas, Santa Rita, Natividad, Chualar, Gonzales, and Soledad with the naked eye. Using a telescope you can see

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The observatory is managed by th ...

on Mt. Hamilton, and

Mount Diablo Mount Diablo is a mountain of the Diablo Range, in Contra Costa County, California, Contra Costa County of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. It is south of Clayton, California, Clayton and northeast of Danville, Califo ...

and the snow-covered Sierras eastward. The

KPRC-FM KPRC-FM (100.7 FM) is a radio station broadcasting a Spanish adult hits format. Licensed to Salinas, California, United States, it serves the Santa Cruz area. The station is currently owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. iHeartMedia, Inc., former ...

KWAV KWAV (96.9 MHz "K-Wave 96.9") is a commercial FM radio station in Monterey, California, broadcasting to the Salinas - Monterey - Santa Cruz region of Central California. It is owned by Stephens Media Group and it broadcasts an adult contempor ...

KION-TV KION-TV (channel 46) is a television station licensed to Monterey, California, United States, affiliated with CBS, Fox, and Telemundo. Owned by the News-Press & Gazette Company, it serves the Monterey Bay area from studios located on Moffett St ...

, and KOTR-LD

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which i ...

s are on Mount Toro, located to the south of Salinas. The Monterey County Superintendent of Schools began building a network of K31OL-D translators in the early 1960s to rebroadcast public television from

KQED KQED may refer to: * KQED (TV), a PBS member station in San Francisco * KQED-FM KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a NPR-member radio station in San Francisco, California. Its parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns its television partners, both ...

in San Francisco, with the first, channel 72 from Mount Toro, going on air in September 1964. Dorrance Ranch, having

conservation easement In the United States, a conservation easement (also called conservation covenant, conservation restriction or conservation servitude) is a power invested in a qualified private land conservation organization (often called a "land trust") or gove ...

s with the

Big Sur Land Trust The Big Sur Land Trust is a private 501(c)(3) non-profit located in Monterey, California, that has played an instrumental role in preserving land in California's Big Sur and Central Coast regions. The trust was the first to conceive of and use ...

is about south of Salinas and east/southeast of Monterey in the Sierra de Salinas Mountain Range of Monterey County on Mount Toro's northern ridge. The land has oak savannas, ponds, wetlands, and grasslands, habitat for golden eagle, California red-legged frog, California tiger salamander, burrowing owl, and California condor. The Piazzoni brothers purchased east of

Carmel Valley Village, California Carmel Valley Village is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Monterey County, California, United States. In 1946, Byington Ford and Tirey L. Ford Jr. developed the Carmel Valley Village, which included an airpark, sh ...

along Chupines Creek Canyon, between Mount Toro and Cachagua village. The ranch was originally part of Rancho Tularcitos. Mount Toro is one of Monterey County's most familiar vistas.

John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social ...

characterized Carmel Valley as "Pastures of Heaven.” The River Fire was a

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire ...

that broke out from a lightning storm early on August 16, 2020, in Monterey County, south of Salinas, near River Road and Mount Toro. Within its first day, it spread to and was 10% contained; mandatory evacuations were ordered, while air and ground crews worked the fire.

Climate

The climate is

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...

. The average temperature is

°C The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The ...

. The warmest month is July, at

, and the coldest is February, at °C. The average rainfall is millimeters per year. The wettest month is December, with millimeters of rain, and the driest is May, with millimeters.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Mountains of Monterey County, California Carmel Valley, California Santa Lucia Range Monterey Ranger District, Los Padres National Forest Mountains of Northern California Big Sur Junípero Serra

Climate

See also

References

External links