The Domelands

Overview

This marvelous wilderness area features some of the most fascinating geology anywhere in Southern California. On this moderately strenuous desert odyssey, hikers will encounter abundant fossils, sandstone formations with caves gouged out by the howling desert winds, narrow canyons with a bewildering combination of rock types, a maze of mud hills, and impressive views across Anza-Borrego Desert State Park’s Carrizo Badlands. Over millions of years, the waters of the nearby Gulf of California waxed and waned in accordance with larger climactic cycles. When global temperatures warmed, the Sea of Cortez would flow into the Salton Sink, covering the landscape with a warm, shallow sea. When the temperatures cooled, the seas would recede, leaving behind layers of sediment. Each layer of sediment was unique in composition; sometimes, the sediment was composed of coarse sand particles. Other times, the sediment was a finer, siltier material left behind during times when the Colorado River’s flow shifted and formed a delta. The tropical inland seas also harbored a wide array of marine life, ranging from large snails called gastropods to walruses. As the endless cycles of marine succession and recession progressed, a geological layer cake composed of numerous layers of rock often embedded with marine fossils formed across the region. As this region also lies along one of the largest and most active faults in North America (the San Andreas), this layer cake has been twisted, contorted, smashed, bashed, and crumpled over the eons, bringing many of the different layers to the surface and exposing fossils in certain places. Rainfall, often in the form of violent flash flooding, carved the landscape into fantastic formations creating a bewildering maze of canyons. As you explore the Domelands area, you travel through a combination of ancient sea beds and the contents the Grand Canyon carried hundreds of miles via the Colorado River. All of it has been crystallized by time and pressure into the magnificent landscape protected b

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