Abstract In this volume we present seven field trip guides that span the breadth of the geology of central California. The trips are associated with the 2013 Cordilleran Section meeting of the Geological Society of America, convened in Fresno, California. These trips provide guides to some of the most remarkable of geologic localities, which are not only iconic, but form type examples of key geologic phenomena and include Yosemite National Park, the San Andreas fault, the Franciscan complex, and the Sierra Nevada Foothills near Fresno, California. The topics covered by these field trips include the nature of continental transform faults, the initiation of subduction, the origin of the Sierra Nevada batholith, the initiation of the Sierra Nevada arc, Pleistocene vertebrate fossils of the Central Valley, and debris flows triggered from burned watersheds.