1Folding and faulting along the San Andreas fault, Palmdale, Implications for simple shear mechanics and education of th

Abstract

The hwy 14 road cut in Palmdale, California, is the location of shallow subsurface exposures of the San Andreas fault zone and its re along its entire 1000 km length. The fault zone is 1.6 km (1 mi.) wid (Barrows, 1987) and consists of a set of faults that parallels the Sa Approximately 3km to the east, the SAF zone, spans a width of 3.2 km 1987) and commonly spans a width of several kilometers along its exte The Palmdale roadcut, about 27 m high and about 600 m long, exposes complexly folded and faulted, middle Pliocene, gypsiferous lacustrine rocks kno Formation (Wallace, 1949). The Mojave segment of the SAF, along which recent rupture in 1857 occurred, crosses the highway at the southern The roadcut is aligned nearly perpendicular to the strike of the faul considered to be a large “trench. ” At the north end of the cut and pa the Little Rock fault which has had more than 20 km (Barrows 1987) of strike slip. The Little Rock fault is not exposed butlocated about 76m (250 ft) north o the northern end of the road cut (Smith, 1976). The “trench ” allows a close lo