Geologic Faulting in Southern California

In regions like southern California where the population occasionally experiences vigorous earthquakes, geological faults are mentioned from time to time in conversation, lectures, and newspaper articles. Since the faults themselves are usually covered with soil or sliderock waste from the slopes above them, they are seldom seen by the general public or even by non-geological but more discriminating observers or engineers. Nevertheless, they are structural features of profound interest and importance not merely to geologists but to all the inhabitants of the regions traversed by them, for they affect the lives of the people in a multitude of ways not immediately suspected.