Once incorrectly touted as the "earth's oldest hills," the Alabama Hills are now know to be the same age as the Sierras with both being formed a "few million years ago" by faulting. Identical in composition, their differences in appearance are said to come form differing weathering processes. Up high, the freezing, expanding and thawing of rainwater and melting snow has caused the more chiseled fragmenting of the granite, while down in the warmer valley, our Movie Rocks took shape when "the climate was more moist and the rock was covered with soil," according to recent geologists' reports quoted by Sue Irwin in "California's Eastern Sierra." As the climate became drier, erosion slowly stripped away the soil and liquid mantle, exposing and shaping the hills and boulders we see today. Today, rainwater and wind continue the slow shaping process and those beiges and blacks in the mottled coloring are the results of being stained those millions of years by the oxidation of iron minerals in the rock. And thus you have the Alabama Hills. But where did that name come form? That goes back to the Civil War.

 In 1863, Southern sympathizers in Lone Pine discovered gold in "them thar hills" and when they heard that a Confederate cruiser named --you guessed it--the Alabama had burned, sank or captured more than 60 Federal ships in less than two years, they named their mining claims after her to celebrate. Before long, the name applied to the whole area.