The Early to Middle Jurassic Sailor Canyon Formation in the northern Sierra Nevada of California consists of volcaniclastic/tuffaceous sediments that were deposited in a distal marine setting. Analyses of petrographic samples indicate that the volcanic source of Sailor Canyon Formation sediments became more felsic over its depositional history. Geochemical data support this observation, and indicate the volcanic source dominantly consisted of relatively high-K andesitic volcanic arc rocks. The now cryptic pre-Late Cretaceous Mojave-Snow Lake fault hypothetically accommodated ~450 km of dextral strike-slip displacement along what is now the axis of the Sierra Nevada. This displacement implies that the volcanic source of the Sailor Canyon Formation was the Early to Middle Jurassic volcanic arc now exposed in the central Sierra Nevada and Inyo Mountains to the east. However, trace and rare earth element discrimination diagrams do not support this correlation, so the proposed 450 km of displacement along the Mojave-Snow Lake fault must be incorrect. As constrained by the data presented here, the displacement on this structure was probably less than ~275 km.
