The Orocopia Mountains are located in

Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Unit ...

in southern

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 ...

, United States, east of the

Coachella Valley , map_image = Wpdms shdrlfi020l coachella valley.jpg , map_caption = Coachella Valley , location = California, United States , coordinates = , width = , boundaries = Salton Sea (southeast), Santa Rosa Mountains (southwest), San Jacint ...

, west of the

Chuckwalla Mountains The Chuckwalla Mountains are a mountain range in the transition zone between the Colorado Desert—Sonoran Desert and the Mojave Desert, climatically and vegetationally, in Riverside County of southern California. Geography The range spans abou ...

, and south 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 ...

in the

Colorado Desert California's Colorado Desert is a part of the larger Sonoran Desert. It encompasses approximately , including the heavily irrigated Coachella and Imperial valleys. It is home to many unique flora and fauna. Geography and geology The Colorado De ...

. The range lies in an east-west direction, and is approximately 18 miles long. The Orocopia Mountains are north of and overlooking the

Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf o ...

and south of

Joshua Tree National Park Joshua Tree National Park is an American national park in southeastern California, east of San Bernardino and Los Angeles and north of Palm Springs, California, Palm Springs. It is named after the Joshua trees (''Yucca brevifolia'') native to t ...

, with the

Chocolate Mountains The Chocolate Mountains of California are located in Imperial County, California, Imperial and Riverside County, California, Riverside counties in the Colorado Desert of Southern California. The mountains stretch more than 60 miles (100 km) ...

to the southeast and the scenic Mecca Hills just northwest.

Orocopia Mountains Wilderness Area

The area is 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 ...

(BLM) designated and manage
Orocopia Mountains Wilderness Area
The Orocopia Mountains are in the

section of the

Sonoran Desert The Sonoran Desert ( es, Desierto de Sonora) is a desert in North America and ecoregion that covers the northwestern Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur, as well as part of the southwestern United States (in Arizona ...

, adjacent to the Lower Colorado River Valley region. Just to the north is th
Mecca Hills Wilderness Area

Flora and fauna

The Wilderness Area includes some

remnant Remnant or remnants may refer to: Religion * Remnant (Bible), a recurring theme in the Bible * Remnant (Seventh-day Adventist belief), the remnant theme in the Seventh-day Adventist Church * ''The Remnant'' (newspaper), a traditional Catholic ne ...

natural spring fed

oasis In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

with the only California native palm, ''

Washingtonia filifera ''Washingtonia filifera'', the desert fan palm, California fan palm, or California palm,Flora of North America Association. ''Flora of North America: North of Mexico Volume 22: Magnoliophyta: Alismatidae, Arecidae, Commelinidae (in Part), and Zi ...

'' or the California Fan Palm.

History

The

Bradshaw Trail Today's Bradshaw Trail is a historic overland stage route in the western Colorado Desert of Southern California. It is a remnant of the much longer Bradshaw Road, also known as the Road to La Paz, or Gold Road, established in 1862 by William D. ...

passed through the mountains, the first recorded route to the

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid drainage basin, watershed that encompasses parts of ...

from

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire an ...

Geology

The dramatic and variable terrain was shaped primarily by movements of the adjacent

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is Fault (geology)#Strike-slip fau ...

over millennia. Most notably, the Orocopia schist, a

blueschist Blueschist (), also called glaucophane schist, is a metavolcanic rock that forms by the metamorphism of basalt and rocks with similar composition at high pressures and low temperatures (), approximately corresponding to a depth of . The blue co ...

assemblage found in the range, matches the Pelona schist found over 250 km away in the

San Gabriel Mountains The San Gabriel Mountains ( es, Sierra de San Gabriel) are a mountain range located in northern Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Tr ...

along the San Andreas fault. Hill and Dibblee (1953) first noted this similarity (a

piercing point In geology, a piercing point is defined as a feature (usually a geologic feature, preferably a linear feature) that is cut by a fault, then moved apart. Reconfiguring the piercing point back in its original position is the primary way geologists ...

), and used it to construct the first estimates of the offset on the fault.

Astronaut training

The Orocopia Mountains offer considerable geologic variety and was one of the areas used for geologic field training by

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Professor of Geology, Leon T. Silver, for astronauts in preparation for the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Project Apollo Moon landing missions. This training included: *

Apollo 13 Apollo 13 (April 1117, 1970) was the seventh crewed mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. The craft was launched from Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970, but the lunar landing was aborted aft ...

Crew Training: September 1969: Astronauts Lovell, Haise and Swigert *

Apollo 14 Apollo 14 (January 31, 1971February 9, 1971) was the eighth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, the third to land on the Moon, and the first to land in the lunar highlands. It was the last of the " H missions", landings at s ...

crew did not train with Dr. Leon “Lee” Silver, they trained with Richard Henry Jahns, a Professor at Stanford at the time. *

Apollo 15 Apollo 15 (July 26August 7, 1971) was the ninth crewed mission in the United States' Apollo program and the fourth to Moon landing, land on the Moon. It was the first List of Apollo missions#Alphabetical mission types, J mission, with a ...

Crew Training: June 1970: Astronauts Scott, Irwin and Worden *

Apollo 16 Apollo 16 (April 1627, 1972) was the tenth crewed mission in the United States Apollo space program, administered by NASA, and the fifth and penultimate to land on the Moon. It was the second of Apollo's " J missions", with an extended sta ...

Crew Training: April 1972: Astronauts Young, Mattingly and Duke *

Apollo 17 Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...

Crew Training: December 1972: Astronauts Cernan, Evans and Schmitt

References

External links

*
Orocopia Mountains Wilderness photographs

BLM Orocopia Mountains Wilderness Map

('' adjacent to north'' ) * {{authority control Protected areas of the Colorado Desert Mountain ranges of the Colorado Desert Mountain ranges of Riverside County, California Bureau of Land Management areas in California Protected areas of Riverside County, California Coachella Valley