Baja Rift

Nearly five and a half million years ago, what we today call Baja California used to be part of the Mexican mainland, and then it began pulling away as tectonic forces underneath split the land apart. Now, Baja California is slowly moving northwest. Some geology experts say that the northernmost extension of this rift, or tear, is the area we call Death Valley, while others claim it to be in the Salton Sea. There is even some plausible scientific evidence to support the idea that this tearing of the land could extend as far north as southern Oregon.

There are those who refer to this phenomenon as the Baja Rift, and one will be standing right in the midst of its lowest portions during a visit to the Badwater Basin area. This area of the western United States is part of the basin and range topography, where the pulling apart of the land is common, creating successive mountain ranges and valleys in north-south directions. The Pacific Plate moves northerly in relation to the North American Plate. This Baja Rift is just the lowest such example of Earth crust movement.

Imagine salt water someday covering the lowered land from the Sea of Cortez all the way to Oregon – about as hard to grasp as the idea that a huge lake once filled the entirety of Death Valley. Things change! It is just that we as individuals are not around long enough to see it happen. Our life spans only witness one little snapshot on the geologic scale, giving us the impression that the Earth’s crust is fixed and immovable. It is moving now as we read this.

This long and ever deepening trough is called Walker Lane by geologists, and can be envisioned if we study a map, paying particular attention to an imaginary line drawn from southeastern Oregon to Death Valley. Walker Lane is also referred to as the Eastern California Shear Zone, and is part of the East Pacific Rise, a rift that extends from Antarctica, and could eventually split the Great Basin by tearing it apart.

We should not allow this to worry us however, as there is still ample time for a few more visits to the area to see Death Valley as it now stands.