San Andreas





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View of the San Andreas Fault on the Carrizo Plain in central California, 35°07'N, 119°39'W

The San Andreas Fault is a geological fault that runs a length of roughly 800 miles (1,300 km) through western and southern California in the United States. The fault, a right-lateral strike-slip fault, marks a transform (or sliding) boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate.

The fault was first identified in Northern California by UC Berkeley geology professor Andrew Lawson in 1895 and named by him after a small lake which lies in a linear valley formed by the fault just south of San Francisco, the Laguna de San Andreas. Following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, it was Lawson who also discovered that the San Andreas Fault stretched well southward into Southern California.