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This view is looking south from Overlook Hill toward the Caliente Range. Soda Lake Road passes just east of the fringes of saltbush habitat. Plant-stabilized clay-dust dunes are in the foreground area. During the summer months when daily temperatures typically range above 100 degrees F, the surface of the playa and other sag ponds along the San Andreas Fault become incrusted with sulfate and carbonate salts (less than 10 percent is sodium-chloride salt). In the past, the lake was perennial and more extensive. During high-standing lake levels during the Pleistocene Epoch (prior
to about 10,000 years ago), the lake contained fish and the region supported
a diverse fauna including large mammal as wooly mammoths, saber-tooth
cats, and dire wolves. Like the Pleistocene lakes in the Great Basin region,
Soda Lake dried up about 9,000 years ago. |
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