The range reaches an elevation of 2,475 feet (754 m) at Mount Barrow, and serves as a drainage divide for the Salton Watershed to the west.

The range is composed of Precambrian basement rocks and Orocopia Schist with Mesozoic granite intrusions.

[2] The Bradshaw Trail passed by the side of the mountains, the first "euroamerican" route to the Colorado River from Riverside, California.

The first is the Little Picacho Wilderness, a 38,170 acre (154.5 km2) region of geological features and habitat protection under the direction of the Bureau of Land Management.

The Indian Pass Wilderness is a distinctive part of the Chocolate Mountains, a range which extends from south central Riverside County to the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona.

Jagged peaks and spires are sliced by mazes of twisting canyons which carry water from occasional desert cloudbursts into several tree-lined washes.