File:Southern Coast Ranges, California (21395717659).jpg

The Coast Ranges of California span 400 miles (640 km) from Humboldt County, California south to Santa Barbara County. The other three coastal California mountain ranges are the Transverse Ranges, Peninsular Ranges and the Klamath Mountains.

Physiographically, they are a section of the larger Pacific Border province, which in turn are part of the larger Pacific Mountain System physiographic division. UNESCO has included the "California Coast Ranges Biosphere Reserve" in its Man and the Biosphere Programme of World Network of Biosphere Reserves since 1983.

The northern end of the California Coast Ranges overlap the southern end of the Klamath Mountains for approximately 80 miles on the west. They extend southward for more than 600 miles to where the coastline turns eastward along the Santa Barbara Channel, around the area of Point Conception. Here the southern end meets the Los Angeles Transverse Ranges, or (Sierras de los Angeles). The rocks themselves that comprise the mountains are of a great variety and widely varying geologic ages. Most of the rocks were formed during the Tertiary, Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. Most were deposited on the sea bottom as sediments, but in many places also had the cracks, crevices and other gaps infused with molten lava or other masses of igneous rock, which were forced in molten condition into the sedimentary rocks. All of the range has been folded and faulted during several periods, with erosion of the softer rock giving much of the current appearance.

The Southern Coast Ranges, of the California Coast Ranges in the Pacific Coast Ranges System, run north and south, parallel to the Pacific Coast in north-central through north-southern California. The Southern Coast Ranges begin on the San Francisco Peninsula and in the East San Francisco Bay Area, and run south into Santa Barbara County. The Transverse Ranges lie to the south. The San Joaquin Valley is on the east, and Pacific Ocean on the west.

The Southern Coast Ranges include the Berkeley Hills, the Diablo Range, the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Gabilan Range, the Santa Lucia Range and Sierra de Salinas, the Temblor Range, and the Sierra Madre Mountains.

As for the Northern Coast Ranges, there are Outer Southern Coast Ranges along the Pacific Ocean on the west, and Inner Southern Coast Ranges to the east, inland to the San Joaquin Valley. The central and southern San Francisco Bay and the Salinas Valley lie between them.

The highest point of the Southern Coast Ranges is Junipero Serra Peak in the Santa Lucia Range, at 5,862 feet (1,787 m). Other peaks include Mount Diablo at 3,864 feet (1,178 m), and Mount Hamilton at 4,196 feet (1,279 m).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Coast_Ranges