The San Andreas Fault is a great fracture of the earth's crust in California. It is the principal fault of an intricate network of faults that extends almost 1000 km (600 miles) from northwestern California to the Gulf of California. The San Andreas Fault is a strike-slip fault that extends at least 30 km (20 miles) vertically into the earth.
The San Andreas Fault separates southwestern California from the North American continent and forms the boundary between two sections of the earth's lithosphere, the North American plate and the Pacific plate. The Pacific plate is moving northwest in relation to the North American plate and it is believed that the total displacement along the fault since its formation more than 30 million years ago has been about 560 km (350 miles).
Movement along the fault causes earthquakes, of which several thousand occur annually. Only a few of these earthquakes are of moderate or higher magnitude. The destructive San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was caused by a movement in which land surfaces on either side of the fault were displaced horizontally up to 6.4 m (21 feet).
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