San Andreas Offset Fence

March 06, 2006

Nyland2_s

Provided and copyright by: David Lynch
Summary authors & editors: David Lynch

Just northwest of San Juan Bautista, California, the San Andreas Fault runs across the driveway of a local ranch. The slow shifting of the fault has offset one stretch of the fence relative to the other. The far side (looking southwest in the picture) is moving northwest (right) relative to the near side. This section of the fault is famous for its many fault features. A prominent scarp of the San Andreas Fault runs through San Juan Bautista, and the historic Mission San Juan Bautista sits squarely on it. A few miles northwest of town is Anzar Lake, a sag pond formed by a slight left-hand bend in the fault. Immediately north of the lake is a granite quarry that's excavating Salinian Granite, rock that has been carried hundreds of miles northwestward from southern California by the fault.

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