Preliminary Field Report of the United States Geological Survey of Colorado and New Mexico, Volume 3 |
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angle anticlinal appear arenaceous clays Arkansas basaltic belt Boulder brick-red Cañon City carboniferous coal beds color Colorado City composed cretaceous beds crops degrees Denver deposits dike Drab clay east side eastern eastward feet thick fifty feet five flanks foot-hills formations Fort Garland fossils Gallisteo geological gneiss gneissic gold Golden City granite gray hills hundred feet igneous inclining Inoceramus iron irrigation jurassic laminated Laramie Laramie Plains layers lignite limestone lode marls masses massive mesas metamorphic rocks Mexico miles mineral mines miocene Monument Creek mountain ranges nearly northeast and southwest Park pass peaks plains portion pudding-stone pyrites quartz Raton red beds reddish River Rocky Mountains rusty sand sandstone Santa Fé sedimentary rocks seen shaft shales slope South Park South Platte southeast southward species springs strata summit surface Territory tertiary beds triassic Union Pacific railroad upper valley variegated veins vertical west side yellow
Popular passages
Page 94 - It produces no offensive gas or odor, and is thus superior in a sanitary point of view, and when brought into general use, it will be a great favorite for culinary purposes. It contains no destructive elements, leaves very little ash, no clinkers, and produces no more erosive effects on stoves, grates, or steam boilers, than dry wood. If exposed in the open air it is apt to crumble, but if protected it receives no special injury. Dr. Torrey thinks there is no reason why it should not be eminently...
Page 14 - With the commencement of the tertiary was ushered in the dawn of the great lake period of the West. The evidence seems to point to the conclusion that from the dawn of the tertiary period, even up to the commencement of the present, there was a continuous series of freshwater lakes all over the continent west of the Mississippi River.
Page 15 - Every year, as the limits of my explorations are extended in any direction, I find evidences of what appear to be separate lake basins, covering greater or less areas, and bearing intrinsic proof, more or less conclusive, of the time of their existence.
Page 95 - ... exert the same kind of influence over the progress of the great west that Pennsylvania exerts over all the contiguous states. When we reflect that we have from 10,000 to 20,000 square miles of mineral fuel in the center of a region where for a radius of 600 to 1,000 miles in every direction there is little or no fuel either on or beneath the surface, the future value of these deposits cannot be over-estimated.
Page 69 - Grande wears its way through these marls with a bottom about two miles wide. On. the west side are distinct terraces with the summits planed off smoothly like mesas. The first one is eighty feet above the river; the second one, two hundred feet. These marls extend all the way between the margins of the Santa Fe Mountains on the east side and the Jernez Eange on the west.
Page 84 - Eiver we pass over a series of upturned ridges of sedimentary rocks, inclining in the same direction with the basaltic ridge trending parallel with it, composed of cretaceous and older tertiary beds. Looking eastward from the Grand Canon, below the hot springs, this remarkable basaltic ridge seems to form a semi-circle with a general dip about north. Immediately below the hot springs the Grand Canon commences, and the river cuts its way through an upheaved ridge of massive feldspathic granite for...
Page 86 - The tertiary deposits of this region may be divided into two groups, viz, the lignite or older tertiary, and the modern pliocene marls and sands which seem common to the parks and mountain valleys. The former conform perfectly to the older beds, while the latter .seldom incline more than three to five degrees, and do not conform to the older rocks. The marl group is undoubtedly contemporaneous with the Arkansas and Sante Fe marls. The geological structure of the Middle Park is more varied, compli...
Page 17 - ... feet or more, almost entirely composed of them. The species seems to be identical with the one found in a similar geological position in the lower lignite beds of the Upper Missouri near Fort Clark, and at the mouth of the Judith River, and doubtless waa an inhabitant of the brackish waters which must have existed about the dawn of the tertiary period in the West.
Page 68 - ... stratification. In the valley of another branch of the Gallisteo, there is a dike two feet wide with the strike a little east of south. The clays on each side are metamorphosed into slates. At another locality there is a bed of coal, which has been changed by an enormous dike into anthracite. Section 1st, clay-slate ; 2d, two and a half to three feet anthracite ; 3d, fourteen to eighteen inches of clay ; 4th, fourteen inches to two feet of anthracite ; 5th, clay shale, passing up into alternate...
Page 68 - The Gallisteo sand group, which plainly overlies the coal strata, but inclines equally with and conforms to them. 3d. The Santa Fé marls, which are of much later date than either of the other two, and rest unconformably upon the Gallisteo group, and never incline more than five or ten degrees.