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Rocks in Kern County consist of all three basic
types. Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary. Each rock type can be
interlaced with the other types.
  
Igneous rocks in Kern County are of both deep and
surface volcanic material. In the El Paso Mountains and throughout the
Mojave Desert and Great Basin Desert many of the mountains are comprised
of basalt which exploded out of the earth by volcanic action.
There are few remnants of surface volcanic activity
in Kern County's portion of the Sierra. North, in Tulare County, rests the
inactive Golden Trout Creek Volcanic area. Along the north fork of the
Kern River there is a small section of basalt that can be seen from Lloyd
Meadows Road along the Rattlesnake drainage east of the Needles lookout.
The Sierra Nevada also has significant chucks of
metasedimentary material that is from the ancient Sierra that rose and
then eroded over the past 90-200 million years. This is frequently
referred to as roof pendants. As the young Sierra rose, it pushed up the
ancient remnants of the eroded Sierra. The older Sierra was mostly
sedimentary rock that metamorphosed under the extreme heat and pressure of
the rising chambers of granite that were extruding through the original
rocks.
Most of the rock in today's Sierra Nevada is granite,
which is an igneous rock that forms from magma that cools extremely slowly
deep within the protective chamber of earth. The longer the cooling the
larger the crystals in the granite.
Physical Features of Kern County
| Mean Latitude is 35° 15' 00" North |
Mean Longitude is 119° 00'00" West |
The lowest Point is 206 feet at the North quarter corner of Section 3,
Township 25 South, Range 23 East, MDM, on the North line of the County,
approximately 12 miles West of Delano (Supervisorial District 4).
The highest Point is 8755 feet at the summit of Sawmill Mountain in
Section 31, Township 9 North, Range 21 West, SBM, on the south line of the
the County, approximately 12 miles West of Frazier Park (Supervisorial
District 4).
The center of population for the state of California is, currently,
within Section 26, Township 28 South, Range 24 East, MDM. That's about 7
miles Northeast of Buttonwillow. (Supervisorial District 4)
Bakersfield Mean Elevation is 400 feet above Sea Level.
Kern County encompasses 8,171 square miles (5,229,440 acres) This is
broken down into the following:
| San Joaquin Valley |
2374 square miles |
Supervisorial District 1 |
2547 square miles |
| Indian Wells Valley |
259 square miles |
Supervisorial District 2 |
2843 square miles |
| Mojave Desert |
1032 square miles |
Supervisorial District 3 |
55 square miles |
| San Joaquin Foothills |
822 square miles |
Supervisorial District 4 |
2586 square miles |
| Mountains |
3683 square miles |
Supervisorial District 5 |
140 square miles |
| Area West of Hwy 99 |
2754 square miles |
Area East of Hwy 99 |
5417 square miles |
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