We have determined the regional shear velocity structure of the lithosphere beneath the Coast Ranges and the Great Valley in northern California from inversion of three fundamental mode Rayleigh wave phase velocity curves. The dispersion measurements were made along three different paths crossing the Coast Ranges and Gret Valley roughly perpendicular to the North American-Pacific plate boundary. The three dispersion curves diverge at periods greater than about 20 s; phase velocities are systematically higher from the northwest to the southeast along the transform margin. Inverting the phase velocities for crustal and upper mantle structure shows that this divergence is indicative of a 3-5% increase in the upper mantle shear velocity from the Napa-Great Valley region to the Diablo Range-Great Valley region. Crustal shear velocities are consistent with the lithologies expected in the middle and lower crust. The increase in mantle shear velocity from northwest to southeast is anticipated by a tectonic model for the development of the California transform margin in which asthenospheric material is emplaced at the base of the North American crust in the slab gap south of the Mendocino triple junction. Adjacent to the plate boundary, this process creates a subcrustal corridor of cooling asthenosphere which is gradually incorporated in the lithosphere lid. We suggest that this causes the observed increase in upper mantle shear velocity away from the triple junction. Finite difference simulations of Rayleigh wave propagation across asthenosphere corridor models produce synthetic phase velocity curves which are similar to the field observations. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1990