Setting
A familiar sight to travelers on U.S. Highway 101 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the oil field is located about midway between Paso Robles and King City, in the southern part of Monterey County, at the Alvarado Road exit from U.S. 101. Most of the field is on the east bank of the Salinas River and in the adjacent hills of the Coast Ranges. Overall it is about five miles (8 km) long by two wide, and its productive area encompasses 4,390 acres (17.8 km2). Elevations on the oil field range from approximately 430 feet (130 m) at the Salinas River to around 1,100 feet (340 m) in the hills to the east; the densest area of operations is on the flat land in the river valley.
Vegetation in the oil field area varies from riparian in the immediate vicinity of the Salinas River, to grassland, chaparral, and oak woodland in the hills and uplands, although much of the vegetation has been removed in the central area of active operations. Land immediately north of the oil field in the Salinas River Valley is agricultural, while other adjacent land, which is mostly hilly, is predominantly used for livestock grazing.
Read more about this topic: San Ardo Oil Field
Famous quotes containing the word setting:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“When I consider the clouds stretched in stupendous masses across the sky, frowning with darkness or glowing with downy light, or gilded with the rays of the setting sun, like the battlements of a city in the heavens, their grandeur appears thrown away on the meanness of my employment; the drapery is altogether too rich for such poor acting. I am hardly worthy to be a suburban dweller outside those walls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)