Bathymetric map showing Santa Rosa-San Nicolas uplift, Southern California: Supplement 1 from "Geology of San Nicolas and Santa Barbara Islands, southern California" (Thesis)

San Nicolas and Santa Barbara islands are the loneliest and most desolate of the islands lying off the coast of Southern California, collectively referred to as the Channel Islands. Because of their isolation, smallness and unattractiveness they probably are the least known of the entire group. The islands have been mentioned casually in the geologic literature, but there is, so far as the writer knows, no definite statements concerning the geology of either of the islands. The geology of the two islands is dissimilar and they present individual problems; although the geologic history of each island is intimately connected with that of the other Channel Islands and the nearby mainland. It is the purpose of this discussion to present the geologic features and the physiographic history of each of the two islands and to draw some conclusions regarding their part in the general development of the present coast line of Southern California