ANZA-BORREGO SOUTH : ROADS   Carrizo Badlands

Carrizo Badlands in Late Afternoon Light

The area called the Carrizo Badlands consists not only of badlands where little or nothing grows, but also of dry creeks and washes, canyons, and a few flat hard-soiled mesas.

You have a couple of choices. One is to climb into your 4-wheel drive vehicle and bounce down the road, and hope you have a nice day and find your way back. The other is look closely at the terrain and try to figure out what has happened here over the past several million years and how.

The area the maps call the Carrizo Badlands is a vast mixing bowl. Some of the soil is original or native, some of it washed in with the Colorado River, and some washed up from the Gulf of California. The river brought wood, now petrified. Ancient lakes and rivers supported plant life and the plant life supported birds and animals whose bones and in some cases hoof prints can still be seen. And then, just to mix things up a little more, the area has experienced volcanic activity, earthquakes (which of course still happen), and incredible landslides which would be on the nightly news and the front pages of all the papers if they had happened today.

After exploring this area and examining its geological and paleontological history, a person can walk or drive down a road and tell from where one piece of soil originated or what kinds of fossil material it may hold. For some people, that's a pretty good thing to be able to do.