Chocolate Mountains

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the range in southwestern Arizona, see Chocolate Mountains (Arizona).

The Chocolate Mountains of California are located in Imperial County and Riverside County in the Colorado Desert in southern California. The mountains stretch more than 60 miles (100 km) in a northwest to southeast direction, and are located east of the Salton Sea and south and west of the Chuckwalla Mountains. To the northwest lie the Orocopia Mountains.

The mountains are located about 30 miles west of the Chocolate Mountains of Arizona, but the two ranges are not connected. The range reaches an elevation of 2,475 feet (754 m) at Mount Barrow.

The mountain range is home to the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range, an aerial and gunnery practice area used by the Navy and Marines. Since a large part of the Chocolate Mountains lie in the gunnery range, those areas are off-limits to the public. Indeed, even areas near the mountains can be dangerous—in one instance, pilots in two jets practicing dropping empty bomb shells overshot the gunnery range and bombed a public campground north of the mountains. One man was slightly injured.

The Chocolate Mountains contain the world's richest gold rift zone. "Geologists estimate that the gold contained in this zone is worth between $40 to $100 billion. These are surface gold deposits which are more profitable to mine than the one-mile deep gold deposits in South Africa." When the gunnery range closes in the future, and the mountains are picked clean of dangerous materials from years of bombing practice, mining will most likely begin. The gold area was owned by the Catellus Development Corporation, now part of the industrial property giant ProLogis.

The mountains receive very little rainfall in a normal year, typically 4-6 inches (100 to 150 mm). The predominant natural plant is creosote bush–white bursage variety, and the mean annual temperature is about 60 °F to 75 °F (16 °C to 24 °C).

The southern end of the mountain range is also home to the Little Picacho Wilderness, a 38,170 acre (154.5 km²) region under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. Lying at the southern end of the Chocolate Mountains at elevations from 200 to 1,500 feet, the wilderness is home to the Picacho wild horse, wild burros, as well as desert tortoises and spotted bats. A herd of desert bighorn sheep are also in the area. It is also called the "Little Picacho Peak Wilderness".