Riverside Mountains

Riverside Mountains
Riverside Mountains
	(view to south); Aerial view of Riverside Mountains at center right-(the West Riversides are just to right (out of view) but attached to the south of the Riversides).; The Big Maria Mountains are above at right (on horizon) to the south.; The small mountain range across the Colorado River in Arizona (to the east) is the Mesquite Mountains.
Highest point
Elevation	2,252 ft (686 m)
Geography
	Riverside Mountains Location of Riverside Mountains in California
Country	United States
State	California
Regions	USGS Vidal

The Riverside Mountains are a mountain range in Riverside County, California.^[1] The town of Vidal, California is located in the West Riverside Mountains.

Geography

The Riverside Mountains are in the Colorado Desert, in the Lower Colorado River Valley region. They are southeast of the Turtle Mountains and north of the Big Maria Mountains, and the Colorado River borders its eastern perimeter. The high point of the range is 2,252 feet (686 m).^[2]

Riverside Mountains Wilderness

The Riverside Mountains Wilderness was established in 1994 and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The Colorado River parallels this 24,004 acre wilderness on its eastern edge.

The landscape varies from gently sloping

foxtail cactus and California barrel cactus; and a small herd of Burro deer (Odocoileus hemionus eremicus) live in the Riverside range.^[3]

Geology

Maria Fold and Thrust Belt

The Riverside Mountains are one of several ranges that constitute the

North American Craton, most notably the Grand Canyon sequence

of sedimentary rocks.

Rocks

The Riverside Mountains contain rocks from both the lower and upper plates of a large

metavolcanics, the metamorphosed Grand Canyon sequence, the metamorphosed McCoy Mountains Formation and related Mesozoic rocks, and the Precambrian basement. The upper plate of the detachment fault consists of a small sedimentary basin containing Tertiary-age syntectonic (deposited during tectonic activity) volcanic units, conglomerates, and other sedimentary rocks

.