The Morongo Valley plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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Morongo Valley’s center stands about 2,570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,800 ft to 4,560 ft, a difference of 2,760 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Gorgonio Mountain, about 11,470 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 2×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone, dolostone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Jurassic, 145 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Morongo Valley reaches Salton Sea by way of Big Morongo Creek, Morongo Wash and the Whitewater: about 60 river miles. Salton Sea has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 40% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Morongo Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
