The North Coast Ranges are a section of the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America, which run parallel to the Pacific Coast from north of San Francisco Bay to the South Fork Mountains of northern Humboldt County. The Klamath-Siskiyou ranges lie to the north, and the Southern Coast Ranges continue south of San Francisco Bay.
The North Coast Ranges run north-south parallel to the coast, and include the King Range of Humboldt County, where the coastal mountains meet the sea dramatically on what is called California's Lost Coast. Component ranges within the North Coast Ranges include the Mendocino Range of western Mendocino County and the Mayacamas, Sonoma, and Vaca Mountains and the Marin Hills of the North Bay. The North Coast Ranges consist of two main parallel belts of mountains, one lying along the coast, the other running further inland. They are separated by a long valley, the northern portion of which is drained by the Eel River and its tributaries, and the southern by the Russian River. A series of short rivers, including the Mattole, Gualala, and Navarro rivers, drain the western slopes of the range. The eastern slope of the North Coast Ranges drains into the California Central Valley. Clear Lake lies in the southeast portion of the range, and drains eastward via Cache Creek. The rivers of the north coast ranges are home to several species of salmon.
The seaward face of the coastal mountains is part of the Northern California coastal forests ecoregion, home to lush forests of Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and Coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii ssp. menziesii).
The drier inland portion is part of the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion, and is home to a number of plant communities, including mixed evergreen forest, oak woodland, and chaparral. A major specific plant community of the inner ranges is Mediterranean California Lower Montane Black Oak-Conifer Forest, which supports particularly high biodiversity within the Coast Ranges including the nominate California Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii). California Mule Deer are the most widespread large mammal, after humans, of the Coast Ranges.
U.S. Route 101 runs north and south through the North Coast Ranges, following the valley of the Russian and Eel rivers. The southernmost peak of the North Coast Ranges is Mount Tamalpais.
Read more about this topic: California Coast Ranges
Famous quotes containing the words north and/or coast:
“Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Li Po’s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.”
—Li Po (701–762)
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)