The Colorado Desert [pp. 44-50]

Overland monthly and Out West magazine. / Volume 10, Issue 1

THE COLORADO DESERT. THE COLORADO DESERT. ROSSING by the San Gorgonio Pass, the continuation of the Sierra Nevada range back of San Bernardino, the traveler leaves the fertile coast valleys, and enters upon what appears to his astonished eyes the parched and deathstricken remains of some ancient world. As he came through the broad, rolling pass, upon his right towered San Gorgonio Peak, a huge unbroken mass, 10,500 feet in height, the great trees up its rugged sides dwindling to mere shrubs. Upon the left, forming the other wall of the pass, pine-clad San Bernardino, more broken and irregular in outline, reaches an altitude of II,500oo feet. But leaving now the mountains behind, he descends into what seems the scorched, blasted bed of some old cyclopean furnace, a wreck of the days when "there were giants in the land." San Gorgonio and San Bernardino on this side have lost their pines, and brown, barren and desolate, frown down upon yet greater desolation. Upon the west, as far as the eye can reach, stretch the Sierras in an unending line-a forbidding, rugged wall. At the north, a spur from this main chain turns off eastward, and then curving around bears to the south, parallel to the Sierras, making another abrupt wall, which at last drops down and is lost near Fort Yuma. Inclosed by these mountains, open only toward the south, where 200 miles away it faces out upon the waters of the Gulf of California, is the Colorado Desert. From its upper end, the eye lifts mile after mile toward the southeast over the broad expanse-no trees, no hills, no water, no life. Only the glare of the never-ending sand, the deceptive mirage, and the silence of death. Here and there a lone whirlwind rears its stately column of sand hundreds of feet in the heated air, and travels slowly on for hours. At times fierce blasts of scorching wind rage for days, carrying the fine sand in clouds that obscure the sun, and give to the sky a dull red glare. These are the dreaded sand-storms of the desert. What is the Colorado Desert? In the spring of I867, I crossed its upper end with troops, on the road to La Paz. I found the sand white with innumerable sea-shells, some minute, some fragile, such as are only found in sheltered arms of the sea. For miles and miles I traced with the eye a strange, welldefined line along the mountain sides, always at the same level. It was as undeviating as the chalk-line of a carpenter's marking-twine. Riding out to it, I found it to be the old beach of a sea. The rocks were worn and rounded up to that level, as by the constant washing of water, with coarse coral formations in their crevices and upon their under sides. Above that line the rocks were shlarp and jagged. The worn rocks showed that for ages the water had stood at that level. No other beach could be discovered. The water consequently, when it abandoned that level, must steadily have diminished, until it disappeared. The surveying party of the Southern Pacific Railroad, in running the line to Fort Yuma, struck the present sea-level the moment their instruments reached this ancient beach. Further south they gradually descended, until a depression of 2I5 feet below the sea was found. The great basin of the desert, the chief engineer, Mr. Phelps, estimated to be at least 350 feet below the level of the sea. The whole area now below the sea [JAN. 44

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The Colorado Desert [pp. 44-50]
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Widney, J. P., M. D.
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Page 44
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Overland monthly and Out West magazine. / Volume 10, Issue 1

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"The Colorado Desert [pp. 44-50]." In the digital collection Making of America Journal Articles. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ahj1472.1-10.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 29, 2025.
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