The El Paso Mountains are located in the northern
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...
, in central Southern
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
in the
Western United States
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Western States, the Far West, the Western territories, and the West) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau.
As American settlement i ...
.
Geography
The range lies in a southwest-northeasterly direction east of
State Route 14, and north of the
Rand Mountains and Randsburg Red Rock Road.
Red Rock Canyon State Park lies at the western end of the range.
The
mountain range
A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have aris ...
is approximately long. It is north−northeast of
California City, and south of
Ridgecrest and
Inyokern.
Highway 395 crosses the range near
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...
.
Black Mountain is the highest point of the range at .
Features
The
El Paso Mountains Wilderness Area is within the range, managed by the BLM−
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...
. The Last Chance Archaeological District, within the wilderness area, is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places listings in Kern County, California.
Vegetation primarily consists of
creosote bush (''Larrea tridentata'') scrub community, with
Joshua trees (''Yucca brevifolia'') on the western side of the range.
The
Burro Schmidt Tunnel, a mining ore transport tunnel dug by hand by William "Burro" H. Schmidt between 1906 and 1938, goes through the El Paso Mountains. Its southern portal overlooks the ghost town of
Garlock.
Prehistory
The
Coso People were early
Native American inhabitants of this mountain range. They created extensive carvings in rock within the El Paso and neighboring mountains, and conducted considerable trade with other tribes as distant as the
Chumash on the Pacific coast.
[C.Michael Hogan. 2008]
See also
*
*
References
* Alan P. Garfinkel. 2004
''Dating "Classic" Coso Style Sheep Petroglyphs in the Coso Range and El Paso Mountains: Implications for Regional Prehistory'', v.2/15/04* C.Michael Hogan. 2008. ''Morro Creek'', ed. by A. Burnha
*
Line notes
Mountain ranges of the Mojave Desert
Mountain ranges of Kern County, California
Mountain ranges of Southern California
Bureau of Land Management areas in California
{{KernCountyCA-geo-stub