California's Colorado Desert is a part of the larger Sonoran Desert, which extends across southwest North America. The Colorado Desert region encompasses approximately 7 million acres (2,800,000 ha), reaching from Northwest Mexico border regions in the south to the higher-elevation Mojave Desert in the north and from the Colorado River in the east to the Laguna Mountains of the Peninsular Ranges in the west. The area includes the heavily irrigated Coachella and Imperial Valleys. The Colorado Desert is home to many unique flora and fauna, many of which can be found nowhere else on the planet.
Read more about Colorado Desert: Geography and Geology, Climate, Flora and Fauna, National and State Parks, Environmental Issues
Famous quotes containing the words colorado and/or desert:
“I am persuaded that the people of the world have no grievances, one against the other. The hopes and desires of a man who tills the soil are about the same whether he lives on the banks of the Colorado or on the banks of the Danube.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“What though the traveler tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick or idle that we must sacrifice our America and today to some man’s ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand and at length a wave of the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that attaches to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I behold the columns of a larger
and purer temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)