The Alabama Hills: As you walk around the Alabama Hills, you might be thinking that you’ve seen these ancient granite shapes somewhere before:

They’ve been the backdrop in dozens of films and TV shows over the last 100 years like Star Trek and Iron Man. 

If you’re making cowboy films, the Alabama Hills, in the view of location scouts in Hollywood, really, really look like the classic American west. Or if you have a script that calls for an exotic location and you need to find something interesting that’s not too far from LA, this location works.

In fact, so many films and TV shows have been shot here that there’s a museum dedicated to the productions. You might think that this would be a tourist gimmick, but the museum is well-curated and thoughtful, and a nice break from all of the ummm… rocks.

These formations will also look familiar if you’ve been to Joshua Tree National Park, with its own display of worn granite boulders and wind-carved arches.

And while eerily similar to Joshua Tree, these ancient granite shapes have 11,000 feet of dramatic Sierra Nevada as a next door neighbor. 

And if you dig around a bit (research, that is; no picks and shovels, please) you’ll learn that the rocks you’re standing on used to be part of the Sierra, but were left behind when the big grey wall of rock to the west started its journey skyward.

To better appreciate the rock formations and how they got there, let’s do a quick orientation while you’re standing on the Hills.

At some point in your visit you’ll probably be standing near the arch pictured above. Stand and face the Sierra Nevada to the west. The rounded rocks under your feet used to be attached to the Sierra. They were created along with their big granite neighbor at the same tectonic event some 100 million years ago or so. 

Now turn and face the east where you’ll see the White Mountains on the Inyo Range.

About 8 to 10 million years ago, these two ranges (the Sierra Nevada and the Inyo) began pulling apart, and started creating what we know today as the Owens Valley.

About 5 million years ago the Sierra Nevada range (or block) began uplifting while the Alabama Hills formation you’re standing on was left behind and began dropping down into the gap between the ranges. (see horst and graben)

Here’s the thing: While the Sierra range towers about 11,000 feet above the worn granite shapes you’re standing on (you’re still standing near the arch right?), if you could somehow remove all of the fill between you and the White Mountains to the east (sorry Lone Pine), you could look down over an escarpment another 8,000 to 10,00 feet to the bedrock that supports the entire formation under your boots. This estimate is based on gravity measurements rather than drilling, and the gravity deficit just east of where you’re standing indicates quite a sand-filled chasm going down to the bedrock.

The area is crawling with fault lines running north and south, up and down and sideways. In 1872, what is now thought to be a 7.9 earthquake, moved the nearby ground about 15 feet north and about 8 feet up into the air, all in around 3 minutes. It struck at 2:25 AM and killed 27 people. Examples of the resulting ‘fault scarps’ can be found around the Lone Pine area today.

Now, you might ask, if the Sierra and The Alabama Hills were once the same formation, why are the hills so smooth and worn down while the Sierra is so sharp and rugged?

In a word (or two) erosion and weathering.

The Alabama Hills, being at a much lower elevation, have been subjected to rain, snow, ice, freezing and thawing, sunshine, glaciers, natural chemical reactions and maybe some magma, and a grinding down by local alluvial sediment that the taller Sierra Nevada just didn’t have to deal with, being 11,000 feet up in the air and all.

And much of this chemical and mechanical weathering happens faster at the warmer temperatures in the valley.

Enough of the tectonic stuff. A great question is; why are the cracks in the rocks straight lines?

It’s really a question of mechanics. You’ve seen quartz chrystals. They form in straight lines as they cool. The Alabama Hills are basically cooled magma, which has a lot of quartz in it and when it cooled, it formed crystalline structures of straight lines and columns. An amazing example of this is found further north in the Sierra at Devils Postpile. So that’s where the straight lines come from.

The smooth surfaces are a result of what is known as spheroidal weathering where surface breakdowns have a tendancy to happen faster along the edges and corners of exposed rock then along a flat surface. Another example of this type of weathering is found as mentioned before, in Joshua Tree National Park.

OK. Enough of the geology. I promise.

So where did the name Alabama Hills come from anyway? It seems that in the 1860’s some prospectors in the area were sympathetic to the Confederate cause and named the area after the C.S.S. Alabama, the Confederate warship that was very effective in laying waste to Union shipping. Another civil war inspired name you’ll find in the area is Kearsarge, which happened to be the name of the Union ship that sunk the Alabama. Payback courtesy of some local Union-sympathetic prospectors.

The geology of the Eastern Sierra is bottomless (pun intended, and if you don’t get the pun you’re not paying attention.)

In many other places, thick green forests or acres of agriculture hide the tectonic goings-on under your feet. Here, all along the eastern Sierra Nevada, those forces are laid bare, raw and exposed, for you to walk on and experience.

It’a a sort of tectonic humbling that reminds you of your place in the universe.

And speaking of the universe, I have to figure out which Star Trek episode was Captain Picard standing with the Sierra Nevada over his shoulders….