Regional Geology of Mount Diablo, California: Its Tectonic Evolution on the North America Plate Boundary
CONTAINS OPEN ACCESS

Mount Diablo and the geology of the Central California Coast Ranges are the subject of a volume celebrating the Northern California Geological Society’s 75th anniversary. The breadth of research illustrates the complex Mesozoic to Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the plate boundary. Recent faulting and folding along the eastern edge of the San Andreas system have exposed in the mountain a core of Franciscan accretionary wedge complex faulted against Cretaceous and Cenozoic forearc strata. The Memoir includes papers on structure, stratigraphy, tephrochronology, zircon provenance studies, apatite fission track analyses, and foraminifera and calcareous plankton assemblages tied to Cenozoic climate events. Chapters also address the history of geologic work in the area and the resource development of oil and gas, mercury, coal, and sand, and road aggregate.
Mount Diablo mercury deposits
-
Published:September 27, 2021
ABSTRACT
The California Coast Ranges mercury deposits are part of the western North America mercury belt, in which mercury occurs most commonly as red cinnabar (α-HgS), sometimes associated with its high-temperature polymorph, metacinnabar (β-HgS). In the Coast Ranges, ores were deposited from hydrothermal solutions and range in age from Miocene to Holocene. Ore deposition at Mount Diablo generally occurred along active faults and associated extension fractures in the Franciscan complex, most often in serpentinite that had been hydrothermally altered to silica-carbonate rock. The Mount Diablo mine lies ~48 km (~30 miles) northeast of San Francisco in Contra Costa County and...
- California
- cinnabar
- Coast Ranges
- Contra Costa County California
- environmental effects
- host rocks
- hydrothermal alteration
- mercury
- mercury ores
- metacinnabar
- metal ores
- metals
- metasomatism
- mine drainage
- mineral composition
- mineral deposits, genesis
- mines
- ore-forming fluids
- pollutants
- pollution
- production
- remediation
- San Francisco Bay
- San Francisco Bay region
- sulfides
- transport
- United States
- Mount Diablo
- Marsh Creek
- Dunn Creek