The Sierra Pelona, also known as the Sierra Pelona Ridge or the Sierra Pelona Mountains, is a

mountain ridge A ridge or a mountain ridge is a geographical feature consisting of a chain of mountains or hills that form a continuous elevated crest for an extended distance. The sides of the ridge slope away from the narrow top on either side. The line ...

in the

Transverse Ranges The Transverse Ranges are a group of mountain ranges of southern California, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region in North America. The Transverse Ranges begin at the southern end of the California Coast Ranges and lie within Santa ...

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...

. Located in northwest

Los Angeles County Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

, the ridge is bordered on the north by the

San Andreas fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal) ...

and lies within and is surrounded by the

Angeles National Forest The Angeles National Forest (ANF) of the U.S. Forest Service is located in the San Gabriel Mountains and Sierra Pelona Mountains, primarily within Los Angeles County in southern California. The ANF manages a majority of the San Gabriel Mountai ...

Geography

The Sierra Pelona Mountains lie northwest of the

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

, which are divided by the wide

Soledad Canyon Soledad Canyon is a long narrow canyon/valley located in Los Angeles County, California between the cities of Palmdale and Santa Clarita. It is a part of the Santa Clara River Valley, and extends from the top of Soledad Pass to the open plain of ...

formation. The mountains are flanked to the south by the

Santa Clarita Valley The Santa Clarita Valley (SCV) is part of the upper watershed of the Santa Clara River in Southern California. The valley was part of the Rancho San Francisco Mexican land grant. Located in Los Angeles County, its main population center is th ...

and separated from the

Antelope Valley The Antelope Valley is located in northern Los Angeles County, California, and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated between the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona, and ...

and the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily ...

to the north by the

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal) ...

. Toward the southeast lie Vasquez Rocks, thrust up by the fault. The

Tejon Pass The Tejon Pass , previously known as ''Portezuelo de Cortes'', ''Portezuela de Castac'', and Fort Tejon Pass is a mountain pass between the southwest end of the Tehachapi Mountains and northeastern San Emigdio Mountains, linking Southern Calif ...

separates the Sierra Pelonas, the San Emigdios and the Tehachapis near Gorman and Lebec. Within the Sierra Pelonas lie the rural areas of Neenach, Three Points,

Lake Hughes Lake Hughes is an unincorporated community in northern Los Angeles County, California. It is in the Sierra Pelona Mountains, northwest of Palmdale and north of the Santa Clarita Valley, in the Angeles National Forest. It is on the sag pond wate ...

, Elizabeth Lake, Acton, Agua Dulce and Green Valley. The cities of Santa Clarita,

Palmdale Palmdale is a city in northern Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. The city lies in the Antelope Valley region of Southern California. The San Gabriel Mountains separate Palmdale from the Los Angeles Basin to the south. On Aug ...

, and Lancaster are located at the base of the mountains.

Climate

The climate of the mountains is a

Mediterranean climate A Mediterranean climate (also called a dry summer temperate climate ''Cs'') is a temperate climate sub-type, generally characterized by warm, dry summers and mild, fairly wet winters; these weather conditions are typically experienced in the ...

. Summers are mostly dry except for occasional thunderstorms, and winters comparatively cold and wet. Snowfall is infrequent due to the relatively low elevations of mountains within this ridge, with only the few tallest peaks regularly receiving snowfall during the winter.

Ecology

Mainly the ridge falls under the

California montane chaparral and woodlands The California montane chaparral and woodlands is an ecoregion defined by the World Wildlife Fund, spanning of mountains in the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and Coast Ranges of southern and central California. The ecoregion is part of ...

ecoregion, excepting the northeastern flank's gradual slope into the

near

where the ecology transitions to that of the

. The mountains are primarily covered in short grasses,

scrub oak Scrub oak is a common name for several species of small, shrubby oaks. It may refer to: *the Chaparral plant community in California, or to one of the following species. In California *California scrub oak (''Quercus berberidifolia''), a widespr ...

trees,

yucca ''Yucca'' is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae. Its 40–50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitis ...

, and other

chaparral Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranea ...

shrubs. The ridge is prone to wildfires in the summer and fall, especially when the

Santa Ana winds The Santa Ana winds (sometimes devil winds) "Scholars who have looked into the name's origins generally agree that it derives from Santa Ana Canyon, the portal where the Santa Ana River -- as well as a congested Riverside (CA-91) Freeway -- leav ...

blow in from the Antelope Valley.

Hydrology

Three major tributaries of the Santa Clara River and numerous minor watercourses and washes drain the ridge: Castaic Creek,

San Francisquito Creek San Francisquito Creek (Spanish for "Little San Francisco" - the "little" referring to size of the settlement compared to Mission San Francisco de Asís) is a creek that flows into southwest San Francisco Bay in California, United States. Histo ...

, and Bouquet Creek. Three

sag pond A sag pond is a body of fresh water collected in the lowest parts of a depression formed between two sides of an active strike-slip, transtensional or normal fault zone. Formation A sag pond is formed along a strike-slip fault, which may creat ...

s nestle within the narrow valley that divides the mountains from the Antelope Valley: Hughes Lake,

Munz Lakes Munz Lakes is a small lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault in the northern Sierra Pelona Mountains, within Los Angeles County, California. Geography The lake is one of a series of sag ponds created by active tectonic plate movement of ...

, and Elizabeth Lake.

Human history

Native American habitation

The Native population of California in the Sierra Pelona and

Santa Susana Mountains The Santa Susana Mountains are a transverse range of mountains in Southern California, north of the city of Los Angeles, in the United States. The range runs east-west, separating the San Fernando and Simi valleys on its south from the Santa C ...

included the Tataviam and Serrano people. They traded with the

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...

and

Chumash Chumash may refer to: *Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism *Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California *Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California See also *Chumash traditional n ...

to the south and west, until the

Spanish colonization of the Americas Spain began colonizing the Americas under the Crown of Castile and was spearheaded by the Spanish . The Americas were invaded and incorporated into the Spanish Empire, with the exception of Brazil, British America, and some small regions ...

relocated them from their homelands.

18th and 19th centuries

The San Francisquito Canyon, which runs north-south through the mountains, served as a major wagon route between the Antelope and San Fernando Valleys. This corridor summited at San Francisquito Pass and was part of the

El Camino Viejo El Camino Viejo a Los Ángeles ( en, the Old Road to Los Angeles), also known as El Camino Viejo and the Old Los Angeles Trail, was the oldest north-south trail in the interior of Spanish colonial Las Californias (1769–1822) and Mexican Alta Cali ...

- an alternate land route to the El Camino Real for reaching northern Spanish and Mexican colonial Alta California - as well as the

Butterfield Overland Mail Butterfield Overland Mail (officially the Overland Mail Company)Waterman L. Ormsby, edited by Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, "The Butterfield Overland Mail", The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1991. was a stagecoach service i ...

route.

20th century

The

Ridge Route The Ridge Route, officially the Castaic–Tejon Route, was a two-lane highway between Los Angeles County and Kern County, California. Opened in 1915 and paved with concrete between 1917 and 1921, the road was the first paved highway directly ...

, a landmark two-lane highway that connected

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

to the rest of California, was built along the western flank of the ridge and was completed in 1915. It was later bypassed by the Ridge Route Alternate ( US 99) in 1930, itself superseded by

Interstate 5 Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Californi ...

completed in 1971. The rapid development of

throughout the 20th century saw construction of the

Los Angeles Aqueduct The Los Angeles Aqueduct system, comprising the Los Angeles Aqueduct (Owens Valley aqueduct) and the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct, is a water conveyance system, built and operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The Owens Valle ...

and five separate reservoirs to supply water to the region: Castaic Lake, Bouquet Reservoir, Drinkwater Reservoir, and

Dry Canyon Reservoir Dry Canyon Reservoir is a small reservoir formed by an embankment dam on Dry Canyon Creek in the foothills of the Sierra Pelona Mountains of northern Los Angeles County, California, just north of the city of Santa Clarita. It was designed as a pa ...

and the St. Francis Reservoir, both now drained and destroyed.

Highest peaks

* Burnt Peak: 5,788 ft (1,764 m) * Liebre Mountain: 5,760+ ft (1,756+ m) * Sawmill Mountain: 5,514 ft (1,681 m) * Mount McDill: 5,177 ft (1,578 m) * Jupiter Mountain: 4,498 ft (1,371 m) * Redrock Mountain (benchmark): 3,991 ft (1,216 m)

Adjacent landforms

Tehachapi Mountains The Tehachapi Mountains (; Kawaiisu: ''Tihachipia'', meaning "hard climb") are a mountain range in the Transverse Ranges system of California in the Western United States. The range extends for approximately in southern Kern County and northwe ...

- on the north * San Emigdio Mountains - on the northwest *

Topatopa Mountains The Topatopa Mountains are a mountain range in Ventura County, California, north of Ojai, Santa Paula, and Fillmore. They are part of the Transverse Ranges of Southern California. Etymology A name for the mountains was first inscribed within ...

- on the west *

- to the southwest *

- to the east *

- to the south *

- to the southeast *

(part of the

) - on the east-northeast