Spanning across 629 square miles, Sequoia National Park is located in East Central California. Directly to Sequoia’s north is Kings Canyon National Park which covers approximately 722 square miles. Due to a large lumbering movement to destroy the sequoia trees, Sequoia National Park was established on September 25, 1890 with the help of John Muir. Later, on March 4, 1940, Kings Canyon was established, and the two adjacent parks began to be administered together. The parks together are a large natural environmental preservation. The largest assembly of giant sequoia trees can be seen in the Giant Forest named by John Muir in 1875 (Harris 739-753).
During the Paleozoic Era, marine sedimentary rocks were deposited in the region of Sequoia and …show more content…
The first period involved the deposition of metamorphosed volcanic and marine sedimentary rocks. These rocks included limestones, shales, and sandstones mixed with volcanics. The second period during the Cretaceous Period can be seen through the plutonic intrusion of the batholith. The second phase Cretaceous’ rock units were quartz diorites, granodiorites, quartz, and monozonites. Subduction and plate convergence off the coast of western North America can also be seen in the Mesozoic Era causing large lateral transport and contrast of the volcanic and sedimentary topographies. The Nevadan orogeny produced mountains such as the great North American Cordillera. This mountain building was also accompanied by immense erosion, a pause in tectonic activity, and the probable beginning of cave development. The Cenozoic Era showed unrelenting intense erosion and slower tectonic activity causing the Sierra Nevada to uplift and tilt westward. Later in the Cenozoic Era, severe glaciation could be seen in the northern Sierra due to high precipitation on the western slopes. In the …show more content…
These geological features are downward sloping projections of country rock into an igneous intrusion. They are typically made of metamorphic rocks scattered through granite and are irregular in shape elongating to the northwest. The roof pendants are placed into four groups based on the similarities of their composition: ophiolites, metamorphosed shale, metamorphosed volcanic rocks, and metamorphosed Paleozoic rocks. Kings Canyon is around 4,000 to 8,000 feet deep with Kings River flowing through the bottom. The deepness of Kings Canyon was caused by very high uplift of the southern part of the Sierra during the Plio-Pleistocene and the strong erosive power of the Kings River. Horseshoe Bend gives the opportunity to see exposures of the roof pendants which consist of slate, quartzite, marble and schist. Some cross bedding and can be seen here as well in the sandstone beds. Multiple valleys can be seen throughout the parks such as Cedar Grove Village and Lodgepole Village. Glacial episodes caused lateral and recessional moraines, depositions of rock, and the U-shaped valleys. Moro Rock is located at the southern edge of Giant Forest. It is a granite dome formed from the Giant Forest Granodiorite which is dark in color and was rounded from exfoliating shells of granodiorite. This dome was also never covered by glaciers. Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks houses approximately 100 caves which are composed of marble interbedded