The Santa Monica Mountains is a coastal mountain range in Southern California, next to the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Transverse Ranges. Because of its proximity to densely populated regions, it is one of the most visited natural areas in California. Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is located in this mountain range.
The San Gabriel Mountains are a mountain range located in northern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Transverse Ranges and lies between the Los Angeles Basin and the Mojave Desert, with Interstate 5 to the west and Interstate 15 to the east. The range lies in, and is surrounded by, the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests, with the San Andreas Fault as its northern border.
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is an American national park that conserves an area of large sand dunes up to 750 feet (230 m) tall on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley, and an adjacent national preserve in the Sangre de Cristo Range, in south-central Colorado, United States. The park was originally designated Great Sand Dunes National Monument on March 17, 1932, by President Herbert Hoover. The original boundaries protected an area of 35,528 acres. A boundary change and redesignation as a national park and preserve was authorized on November 22, 2000, and then established on September 24, 2004. The park encompasses 107,342 acres while the preserve protects an additional 41,686 acres for a total of 149,028 acres. The recreational visitor total was 527,546 in 2019.
The Santa Clara River is 83 mi (134 km) long, and is one of the most dynamic river systems in Southern California. The river drains parts of four ranges in the Transverse Ranges System north and northwest of Los Angeles, then flows west onto the Oxnard Plain and into the Santa Barbara Channel of the Pacific Ocean.
The Antelope Valley is located in northern Los Angeles County, California, and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated between the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona, and the San Gabriel Mountains. The valley was named for the pronghorns that roamed there until they were all but eliminated in the 1880s, mostly by hunting, or resettled in other areas. The principal cities in the Antelope Valley are Palmdale and Lancaster.
State Route 14 is a north–south state highway in the U.S. state of California that connects Los Angeles to the northern Mojave Desert. The southern portion of the highway is signed as the Antelope Valley Freeway. The route connects Interstate 5 on the border of the city of Santa Clarita to the north and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Granada Hills and Sylmar to the south, with U.S. Route 395 (US 395) near Inyokern. Legislatively, the route extends south of I-5 to SR 1 in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles; however, the portion south of the junction with I-5 has not been constructed. The southern part of the constructed route is a busy commuter freeway serving and connecting the cities of Santa Clarita, Palmdale, and Lancaster to the rest of the Greater Los Angeles area. The northern portion, from Vincent to US 395, is legislatively named the Aerospace Highway, as the highway serves Edwards Air Force Base, once one of the primary landing strips for NASA's Space Shuttle. This section is rural, following the line between the hot Mojave desert and the forming Sierra Nevada mountain range. Most of SR 14 is loosely paralleled by a main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad, used for the Antelope Valley Line of the Metrolink commuter rail system as well as a connection between Los Angeles and the Central Valley via Tehachapi Pass.
The Tehachapi Mountains are a mountain range in the Transverse Ranges system of California in the Western United States. The range extends for approximately 40 miles (64 km) in southern Kern County and northwestern Los Angeles County and form part of the boundary between the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert.
The Arroyo Seco, meaning "dry stream" in Spanish, is a 24.9-mile-long (40.1 km) seasonal river, canyon, watershed, and cultural area in Los Angeles County, California. The area was explored by Gaspar de Portolà who named the stream Arroyo Seco as this canyon had the least water of any he had seen. During this exploration he met the Chief Hahamog-na (Hahamonga) of the Tongva Indians.
Soledad Canyon is a long narrow canyon/valley located in Los Angeles County, California between the cities of Palmdale and Santa Clarita. It is a part of the Santa Clara River Valley, and extends from the top of Soledad Pass to the open plain of the Valley in Valencia. The upstream section of the Santa Clara River runs through it.
The Ventura River, in western Ventura County in southern California, United States, flows 16.2 miles (26.1 km) from its headwaters to the Pacific Ocean. The smallest of the three major rivers in Ventura County, it flows through the steeply sloped, narrow Ventura Valley, with its final 0.7 miles (1.1 km) through the broader Ventura River estuary, which extends from where it crosses under a 101 Freeway bridge through to the Pacific Ocean.
The Trust for Public Land is a U.S. nonprofit organization with a mission to "create parks and protect land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come." Since its founding in 1972, The Trust for Public Land has completed 5,000 park-creation and land conservation projects across the United States, protected over 3 million acres, and helped pass more than 500 ballot measures—creating $70 billion in voter-approved public funding for parks and open spaces. The Trust for Public Land also researches and publishes authoritative data about parks, open space, conservation finance, and urban climate change adaptation. Headquartered in San Francisco, the organization is among the largest U.S. conservation nonprofits, with approximately 30 field offices across the U.S., including a federal affairs function in Washington, D.C.
The Sierra Pelona, also known as the Sierra Pelona Ridge or the Sierra Pelona Mountains, is a mountain ridge in the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. Located in northwest Los Angeles County, the ridge is bordered on the north by the San Andreas fault and lies within and is surrounded by the Angeles National Forest.
The Richmond Greenway is a pedestrian and bicycle path in Richmond, California.
The San Gabriel Mountains Regional Conservancy (SGMRC) is a regional environmental organization located in the foothill area of the eastern San Gabriel Valley. It is concerned with the conservation of land, land use planning, publication of studies, watershed management, land management, and education.
Higby Mountain or Mount Higby 892 feet (272 m), is a traprock mountain ridge located 3.75 miles (6.04 km) east of Meriden, Connecticut. It is part of the narrow, linear Metacomet Ridge that extends from Long Island Sound near New Haven, Connecticut, north through the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts to the Vermont border. Higby Mountain is known for its high cliff faces, unique microclimate ecosystems, and rare plant communities. It rises steeply 600 feet (180 m) above the Quinnipiac River valley and the city of Meriden to the west as a continuous 2-mile (3 km) long ledge. The mountain is traversed by the 50-mile (80 km) Mattabesett Trail.
The Council for Watershed Health (CWH) is a nonprofit environmental organization in the U.S. state of California. It was founded in 1996 by Dorothy Green to preserve, restore, and enhance the Los Angeles and San Gabriel River watersheds. To accomplish this, it has brought together representatives from the regional water agencies, as well as government regulatory agencies ; community and environmental citizen groups; and businesses in the Los Angeles Basin watershed.
The Antelope Valley of the California High Desert AVA is an American Viticultural Area north of Los Angeles. The AVA is near the Sierra Pelona Valley AVA and the Leona Valley AVA.
Centennial, California, is a proposed 12,323-acre (49.87 km2) master-planned community on Tejon Ranch, in northwestern Los Angeles County between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. It is situated in the far western Antelope Valley at the foothills of the Sierra Pelona and Tehachapi Mountains. It would be built along California State Route 138 east of Interstate 5 and northeast of Quail Lake.
The California High-Speed Rail system will be built in two phases. Phase 1 will be about 520 miles (840 km) long, and is planned to be completed in 2033, connecting the downtowns of San Francisco, Los Angeles using high-speed rail through the Central Valley with feeder lines served at Merced and an extension to Anaheim. In Phase 2, the route will be extended in the Central Valley north to Sacramento, and from east through the Inland Empire and then south to San Diego. The total system length will be about 800 miles (1,300 km) long. Phase 2 currently has no timeline for completion.
