Western Earth Surface Processes

U.S. Geological Survey
Open-File Report 98-229
Version 1.0

Scenic Drive Landslide of January-March 1998, La Honda, San Mateo County, California

By Angela S. Jayko, Michael J. Rymer, Carol S. Prentice, Ray C. Wilson, and Ray E. Wells

1998

thumbnail view of map
Plot of Scenic Drive landslide boundaries and internal features (from Map 1).

The small rural town of La Honda, Calif., is an unincorporated region of San Mateo County situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the western part of the San Francisco peninsula. Much of the town is underlain by a previously recognized ancient landslide complex. The ancient slide complex covers about 1.0 to 1.25 km2, parts of which have been historically active. This report describes a recent landslide involving part of Scenic Drive, La Honda, that became active in January 1998. This report does not describe other currently active landslides in La Honda, such as the January 1998 slide on lower Recreation Drive, or the history of sliding in the area. This report concerns the principal morphological features we observed and mapped between 11 February and 21 March 1998 on an enlargement of a 1:7500-scale air photo acquired 6 March 1998 and prior to that on a town property-line map, and by laser survey carried out between 26 February and 8 March. The principal objective of this report is to make available the detailed photographic and topographic base maps and associated description of surface morphological features.


Download this report as a ~64" x 36" PDF poster (of98-229.pdf; 18.8 MB)

Also of interest

USGS Open-File Report 2005-1191 Map showing Features and Displacements of the Scenic Drive Landslide, La Honda, California, During the Period March 31-May 7, 2005, by Ray E. Wells, Michael J. Rymer, Carol S. Prentice and Karen L. Wheeler (2005)

USGS Open-File Report 2006-1397 Map showing Features and Displacements of the Scenic Drive Landslide, La Honda, California, During the Period March 31, 2005-November 5, 2006, by Ray E. Wells, Michael J. Rymer, Carol S. Prentice, and Karen L. Wheeler (2006)

General Information Product 48 Riding the Storm—Landslide Danger in the San Francisco Bay Area, Produced, directed, and edited by Karen Adams (2007) [video]

For questions about the content of this report, contact Angela Jayko.

Version history


Download a current version of Adobe Reader for free

| Help | PDF help | Publications main page | Open-File Reports for 1998 |
| Geologic Division | Western Earth Surface Processes |


This report is also available in print from:

USGS Information Services, Box 25286,
Federal Center, Denver, CO 80225
telephone: 888 ASK-USGS; e-mail: infoservices@usgs.gov


Accessibility FOIA Privacy Policies and Notices

Take Pride in America home page. FirstGov button U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1998/of98-229/
Page Contact Information: Michael Diggles
Page Last Modified: February 16, 2007