Garlock Fault

It marks the northern boundary of the area known as the Mojave Block, as well as the southern ends of the Sierra Nevada and the valleys of the westernmost Basin and Range province.

Relatively few communities lie directly along the Garlock, as it is primarily situated in the desert, with Frazier Park, Tehachapi, Mojave, and Johannesburg being the closest to it.

The Garlock is not considered to be a particularly active fault, seldom producing any shaking detectable by humans, although it has been known to generate sympathetic seismic events when triggered by other earthquakes and in one instance by the removal of ground water.

These events, as well as continuing microearthquake activity and the state of the scarps from previous ruptures, do indicate that the Garlock will produce another major quake at some point in the future.

[2] A study published in October 2019 in the journal Science indicated that a part of the Garlock fault slipped after being triggered by the series of earthquakes in the Ridgecrest area which occurred in July 2019.