A Glimpse of Pinnacles National Park
From highway 101, the west entrance of the Pinnacles National Park is accessed through the town of Soledad by Highway 146. Highway 146 turns into one long and winding one-lane road goes deep into the California’s Central Valley where the Pinnacles National Park is located. The park which reopened from the longest government shutdown that lasted for 34 days the week before must have been significantly spared because of its remote location and its being just a new national park having been only designated as one in 2013. At the mention of the recent reopening of the park, the park ranger explained that they were not supposed to discuss the government shutdown that started three days before Christmas.
Richard and I were the very first park visitors that Monday morning. As most of the more visited national parks, most of the interesting facts about the park are found at the audio-visuals at the visitor center. Summing up a profile of the 26,000 acre recently designated national park, the visitor center pretty much highlighted the park as a geologic puzzle that was born out of fire in an era with rapid change and came with rocky clues and rare caves among others.
According to the park brochure, the rock spires that dominate the landscape of the then Gabilan Mountains that became known as Pinnacles National Monument in 1908 are believed to have began some 60 million years ago. Geologists believe that the earth's crust has always been divided like jigsaw puzzle pieces. These jigsaw puzzle pieces are called plates. Geologist surmised that these plates interact by subduction zones and and grinding past each other transforming boundaries as a result. Subduction is a term use when an earth's plate moves beneath the other. Initially, there was the North American Plate, which was the lighter and less dense crust on top of and the Farallon Plate.
as a result. The crack that started from the Gulf of Mexico which is on the southeastern side of the North American continent stretches 600 miles northwest to the Mendocino coast, about 160 miles north of San Francisco into the Pacific Ocean. The crack is now popularly known as the San Andreas Fault zone.
“But my wedding anniversary came by and it was really hard if you are furloughed. There I said it.”
Geologists believe that the Pinnacles Volcanic Field began around the time the North American Plate started pushing down Farallon Plate beneath it. As the denser and heavier plate was being pushed downward conatantly under the North American Plate, volcanic activity ensued. Molten rock and magma found their way upward and seeped into vertical cracks of the earth's surface and later hardened as dikes or walls. Once the Farallon plate was completely pushed beneath the North American plate, the Pacific plate emerged. The Pacific plate, rather than being pushed down beneath the North American plate sort of pushed back against its adversary. A small portion of the North American plate cracked
The San Andreas Fault zone is believed to cross over into the Pinnacles National Park. With the theory that two plates grinding past each other transform boundaries at the rate of one inch per year, the Pinnacle volcanic field began its strike-slip displacement journey northwest from Lancaster, a town about 65 miles north of Los Angeles, California. The Pacific plate is believed to have relocated the Pinnacles National Park 195 miles north of its birthplace. At the rate of one inch per year and 63,360 inches to a mile, the park seemed to have been travelling northwest for the last 12, 355, 200 years. Scientists who estimate that the Pinnacle volcanic field came into existence 22 to 23 million years ago in Lancaster in Southern California also surmise that the volcanic field that became part of Pinnacles National Park took its time wandering, getting lost or being held back by the North American plate.
Comments