The Laguna Salada Fault runs along the eastern base of the Sierra de Juárez in northern Baja California, Mexico, just south of the United States border near a dry lakebed of the same name. It is a right-lateral strike-slip fault with a normal (dip-slip) component, part of the broad plate-boundary zone west of the Imperial Valley.
The fault threads through a tectonically complex region where the San Andreas system passes its motion southward into the Gulf of California rift. Bounded by desert mountains and sediment-filled basins, it can rupture together with neighbouring faults across the international line.
It produced the 1892 Laguna Salada earthquake (magnitude ~7), one of the largest historical quakes in the region. More recently, the 2010 El Mayor–Cucapah earthquake (magnitude ~7.2) ruptured a complex fault network that included the Laguna Salada structure, shaking Mexicali and the Imperial Valley.