Some shelf wear on bottom edge Foxing on book ledge Time Inc, 1972, 184pages Baja California is a geographic anomaly in almost every way. Its 55,000 square miles are only about one third of the total area of American California, but the peninsula is 800 miles long. Baja is very largely a land of mountains and uplands, but much of the peninsula is desert, which by definition receives less than 10 inches of rainfall a year.