Tick Canyon

Map Satellite

Tick Canyon has a remarkable variety of clearly exposed geologic features, unmatched in any other similarly compact area within 400 kilometers (250 miles) of Los Angeles. It displays granitic basement rocks, basaltic lava flows, volcanic ash-fall tuffs, mud-flow agglomerates, monolithologic debris-flow breccias, shallow-water lake shales and evaporite beds, flood-plain and alluvial-fan conglomerates, sandstones and siltstones. Sedimentary structures, such as channels, cross beds, graded beds, "flame" structures, load casts and ripplemarks, are clearly observable.

Overturned strata, an anticline, two synclines, minor folds, and numerous faults of various types, including an unusual bedding-plane fault and faults with multiple periods of movement, are well displayed here. Additionally, a variety of minerals occurs in the canyon, including the rare borate minerals veatchite and howlite.

The basement rocks are of Pre-Cambrian origin. The volcanics and some of the sandstones are of the Oligocene nonmarine Vasquez Formation. The lower Miocene Tick Canyon Formation includes siltstones, sandstones and conglomerates. A variety of fossils has been found in this Formation, including pocket mice, rabbits, slender oreodont, browsing camelid and browsing horses.

The vegetation is an example of a transition area between coastal chaparral and desert. Prominent plants include Yucca whipplei, pinyon pine, Pinus monophylla, and scrub and interior live oaks, Quercus berberidifolia, and Quercus wislizenii. Along the perennial stream which flows through the canyon there are sycamore, Platanus racemosa, and arrowweed, Pluchea sericea.

Integrity: There are some dirt roads and quarrying operations in the area.

Use: Private

January 1980