![]() More>ġ685 Main Street, Room 209, Santa Monica, CA 90401įax (310) Pro Tem Lana Negrete Mayor Pro Tem Lana Negrete has served on the Santa Monica City Council since June 2021. His current term expires in November 2024. Not only will that keep you safe, but eventually it'll grant you access to those long awaited carpool lanes that are part of the expansion project.Mayor Phil Brock has served on the Santa Monica City Council since December 2020. Instead, have someone else do the driving. "Watch where you are driving, don't try to look at the rocks." Sylvester says knowing about the geological history exposed by the 405 construction might make your commute a little more interesting.īut he's quick to point out, don't go rock-watching alone. now requires a geologist to inspect every hillside property to keep a similar disaster from happening. ![]() The landslides caused more than $7 million in damages to newly built homes.īecause of that, the City of L.A. Which they did following heavy rains in January of 1952. "Its beds dip towards the Valley and therefore they can slide into the Valley more easily." "It's finer grain" Sylvester said of the Modello rocks. These are young rocks, relatively speaking, only six to 12 million years old. Just past Mulholland Drive heading North, a group of light brown rocks called the Modello formation comes into view. How the Santa Monica Mountains were formed He says it's one of only a few east-west ranges in the country. "So that now, the Santa Monica Mountains, which use to be parallel to the San Diego coast line are now east-west mountains!" Sylvester says at some point the mountains got snagged on some feature of North American Plate and were forced to rotate about 110 degrees. Slowly, the plate dragged the mountains that would become the Santa Monica and San Gabriel ranges north. (The seam between the Pacific Plate and the neighboring North American Plate forms the San Andreas Fault.) That slab was on the tectonic Pacific Plate which is slowly pushing up the California coast at an average rate of two inches a year. "And then about 20 million years ago, a big slab broke off," he explained. Santa Monica slate, and in fact the entire Santa Monica Mountain chain, started down by San Diego and San Clemente, says Sylvester. ![]() He admits it's not the prettiest stone to look at, but he says it has an epic origin story. When this rock last saw the light of day, dinosaurs still roamed the earth. Sylvester says this formation dates back to the Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. "It is also a very weak rock, it slides up easy, it breaks up easy," he said, adding that most of it is held up by massive retaining walls along the 405 freeway. Santa Monica slate is a gray stone that is chipped and flinty. "See! There's the Santa Monica slate over there, see it?" They were unearthed during the initial construction of the 405 about half a century ago.Ī little further north on the freeway a different kind of stone enters the picture.Ī little past the Getty Center on the east side of the 405, Sylvester points to a darker stone covering most of the mountain side. The sea eventually retreated, and these sandstone remnants of L.A.'s watery past were hidden for millennia. "So those rocks over there are marine rocks they were deposited on the sea floor." "This was a big seaway," he said while surveying area near the freeway now full of gas stations and restaurants. was a very different place, Sylvester says. On the south-west side of the Sepulveda pass for example, Sylvester says you can see some light tan sandstone rocks that date back to the Cretaceous age, 90 to 100 million years ago. He says the construction has given people a rare chance to see the insides of the ancient Santa Monica Mountains. County Metro says it likely won't be finished until the middle of next year.īad news if you are a commuter, but good news if you are a geologist like Arthur Sylvester. The project is moving slower than expected: it's already more than a year behind schedule, and L.A. Since the 405 expansion project started in the summer of 2010, construction workers have cleared brush, cracked rocks and sliced into the Santa Monica Mountains at the Sepulveda Pass.
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