If you should stop at the Convict fishing resort you may wonder about the vistas rising before you. The panarama has two magnificent pikes, a deep cold lake, and gravel on all sides.
The biggest thing that happened here is a very large volcano blew around 760,000 years ago. The volcano was active because a hot zone developed due to forces crunching and building the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the U.S. west coast. Cailifornia Hwy. 395 cuts through the Long Valley Caldera, the main feature of that long ago event. That moment in time is also evident as you drive up Hwy. 395 from Los Angeles, because basalt and cinder cones litter the scenery.
Later, about 20,000 years ago, cold set in and huge glaciers crawled down the mountains and left piles of rock called moraines. Convict Lake formed because a moraine is acting as a natural dam holding the water back.
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Comments
Henry, There was gold mining a few miles north in Mammoth, but not much was found. North in the town of Bodie millions of dollars of gold was mined till the nineteen twenties. It is now a National ghost town.
My understanding of moraines is that they contain rocks from a vast area that were moved and deposited by a glacier. Are there valuable minerals among then? Also, volcanoes also tend to have minerals separate, like gold, when the rocks cool. Is this a place for finding interesting deposits?
Derdriu, The initiative to split the state was funded by a multi-rich businessman. A few weeks ago State Courts ruled against it, so it is not going on the next election ballot. Cities are a good example of splitting. Several divided in CA in the early 20th century and it almost always involved the upper classes cutting the lower classed part of the city off. Upland/Ontario and Covina/West Covina are two examples. Such divisions could merely be trying to make big problems go away. But all questions and troubles can be addressed if you work at it hard enough.
paperfacets, Thank you for the annotated visual tour! What in particular of all the obvious motivators (activities, geology, history, scenery) causes you to visit Convict Lake every year? It's interesting that the six convicts' escape and Wells Fargo agent Morrison's death in the round-up warrant, more than any geological or human event or religious inspiration, the naming of a lake and of a peak. In reading your enigmatic statement "California counties are not as famous as the Irish counties, but they are by far larger," would county sizes change or stay the same if California becomes three states and what would the impact be on the Convict-Lassen-Lava tour?
This was a really interesting article.
The rich variety of volcanic features that you describe makes the place very special. Do you think that such variety indicates that a complex geological history has occurred in the region? I ask this because you mention basalt rocks and sulfur pots, but basalt is low on sulfur, so this indicates that different kinds of vulcanism have occurred through geological time in the region.