80 



LARAMIE FLORA OF THE DENVER BASIN. 



various direct and collateral data which might 

 be expected to afford some conclusion regard- 

 ing what the term can and can not properly 

 be used to designate. This study led Veatch 

 to the conclusion that the Laramie Plains, and 

 more specifically the vicinity of the town of 

 Carbon, Wyo., should be considered as the 

 type locality for the Laramie. He said: 



The name "Laramie" is derived from the Laramie 

 Plains, in eastern Wyoming. As commonly used in the 

 early seventies, this included the plains region extending 

 from the Front Range to and slightly beyond the North 

 Platte River. 



The most important locality on the Laramie Plains at 

 this time was Carbon. * * * It was the only locality 

 on the Laramie Plains where the King Survey critically 

 examined and distinctly delimited the Laramie beds. 



It was the practice of the King and Hayden surveys 

 to name formations and groups from localities where the 

 beds were regarded as typically exposed. AVhile King 

 and Hayden did not always definitely state that a name 

 was derived from a certain locality, the source of the 

 name can in all cases be completely inferred from the 

 context. 



Veatch then proceeded to argue that if the 

 name was derived from the Laramie Plains, 

 and if Carbon as the place best known at that 

 time is taken as the type locality, it then 

 follows that the term Laramie has been incor- 

 rectly applied for all these years, as it is now 

 disclosed that only the beds above the great 

 unconformity are exposed in that vicinity. 



This question has been so thoroughly re- 

 viewed by Whitman Cross " in his paper on 

 "The Laramie formation and the iShoshone 

 group" that the following extended ([notation 

 is made: 



As to the origin of the term Laramie Mr. Veatch points 

 out that Clarence King, who proposed the name and de- 

 fined its application, was very careful in the choice of 

 appropriate geographic formations. That is undoubtedly 

 true in a general way; still King was not working under 

 any such rule as that now prevailing in the United States 

 Geoloeical Survey. Much space is given to establishing 

 by citations the exact application of the name Laramie 

 Plains in the seventies, and to showing that sections of 

 "Laramie" beds examined by the Hayden and King 

 geologists were probably all above the unconformity seen 

 at Carbon. « » » if the term Laramie had been in 

 fact proposed especially for strata of the Laramie Plains, 

 or even for a formation known by King and Hayden only 

 in the zone traversed by the Union Pacific Railroad or 

 the fortieth parallel in Wyoming, it is probable that many 

 stratigraphers would agree with the sweeping conclusion 

 that "strictly considered, the term Laramie, therefore. 

 can appropriately be applied only to the beds above the 



" Washington Acad. Scl. Proc.. vol. 11, p. 29, 1909. 



great unconformity." * * * But the name was not 

 so proposed. It was introduced into literature and de- 

 fined by King as a compromise term for beds known to 

 be widely distributed from Montana to New Mexico. 

 The statement made by King is very clear as to the desire 

 of Hayden and himself to have a name which each could 

 use for a great series of supposedly conformable beds, 

 without prejudice as to age. Laramie was practically 

 proposed as a synonym for "Lignitic," but not as an exact 

 one, for the term had been very broadly used by Hayden 

 and others. 



There is not the slightest doubt as to the fundamental 

 stratigraphic relations which King and Hayden thought 

 characteristic of the Laramie. In all statements quoted 

 and in others which might be cited the relation most 

 strongly emphasized in regard to the Lariimie is its con- 

 formity ^vith the underh-iug Cretaceous beds. King 

 believed the Laramie to be Cretaceous; Hayden thought 

 it transitional between Cretaceous and Tertiary. King 

 believed that Mesozoic sedimentation ended by reason of a 

 great Rocky Mountain revolution and that the Laramie was 

 separated from the lowest Eocene beds, erroneously sup- 

 posed by him to be the Wasatch, by a marked uncon- 

 formity. * * * 



The Laramie of King's conception was a natural strati- 

 graphic unit with a well-defined base to be found in many 

 places, but with an upper theoretical limit which might 

 nowhere be represented, owing to the assumed pre- 

 Tertiary erosion. It was to embrace the upper group of 

 Conformable Cretaceous sediments, deposited in brackish 

 or fresh waters during gradual continental uplift. 



The same ground was taken by A. C. Peale "* 

 in a paper published a few months after that 

 by Cross. As Peale was a member of the 

 Hayden Survey at the time the Laramie was 

 established and was of course familiar with 

 all the details connected with it, his testimony 

 is especially valuable. Concerning a type 

 locality for Laramie he said : 



There was no type locality so far as we [members of the 

 Hayden Survey] were concerned, nor was there any such 

 idea in the mind of Hayden. He proposed the name partly 

 because it was a euphonious name and a broad one as he 

 conceived it, the beds outcropping not only in th(! Laramie 

 Plains but also on both sides of what was then sometimes 

 known as the Laramie Range and also in the vicinity of 

 the Laramie River. It was also proposed by him partly 

 out of compliment to Clarence King, who was then working 

 in what Hayden termed the Laramie Plains, he using the 

 terra in its very broadest sense as reaching from the 

 Laramie Range to the Wasatch Range."" * * * It 

 was intended that the name should cover all localities in 

 which the beds occurred. If any localities should be con- 

 sidered as typical localities they would be those mapped 

 by us along the Front Range in eastern Colorado and by 

 King along the range in Wyoming. That Clarence King 



" On the upplication of the term Laramie: Am. Jour. Sci., 4th ser., 

 vol. 28, pp. 4.Va8, 1909. 



"Cf. Hayden, F. V., V. S. Geol. Survey Wyoming Rept., 1870, p. 

 121, 1871. 



