264 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 75 



is best exposed southwest of the Sawback Range in Castle Mountain 

 and in the high ridges on the southwest side of Little Pipestone Creek 

 and the upper Pipestone River. 



The structure of the Sawback Range, so well worked out by Mc- 

 Connell/ has greatly facilitated erosion of the highly inclined strata 

 and thus given many miles of clear exposure of the various forma- 

 tions involved in the uplift and faulting. These are often difficult of 

 access because of high points and ridges and steep slopes, but once 

 the section is determined, any given bed may usually be followed for 

 a long distance. These uplifts and ridges are well illustrated by 

 plates 30, 31. 



Ranger Canyon Section 



At the mouth of Ranger Canyon the quartzites and limestones of 

 the Carboniferous dip at a high angle to the southwest, and as the 

 canyon cuts back into the range, lower and lower beds are exposed 

 down to the Devonian, and below that the Sarbach and Mons forma- 

 tions. The section of the latter was measured near the head of the 

 northeast branch of Ranger Brook Canyon lo miles (i6 km.) north- 

 northwest in an air line from Banff, Alberta. 



Ranger Brook heads high up in the Sawback Range near the divide 

 separating it and the branches of Forty mile Creek on the northeast 

 side of the range. It flows .southeast for nearly two miles (3.2 km.) 

 and then southwest through a canyon between Mount Sawback on 

 the north and Mount Allan on the south, and passes out at the south- 

 west foot of the range, flowing past the Massive Park and Game 

 Warden lodge, on the Banff- Windermere motor road, to the Bow 

 River. 



The contact between the thin bed of shale at the base of the dark 

 Middle Devonian limestones of the Messines formation carrying 

 Stromatopora and numerous corals, with the subjacent light gray, 

 siliceous and cherty limestones representing the Sarbach formation, is 

 well shown in the cliffs at the northeast head of the canyon ; also 

 along its northwest side and southeast rim where the canyon turns to 

 the southwest and cuts through the Devonian and superjacent Carbon- 

 iferous limestones. , 



The contact on the south side of the canyon is best seen at a point 

 about 3 miles (4.8 km.) above the mouth of Ranger Canyon, and 

 a mile (1.6 km.) south of the brook. It occurs in a steep, narrow 

 ravine that extends from a notch on the top of the ridge 1,500 feet 



* Geological Structure of the Rocky Mountains, by R. G. McConnell. Geol. & 

 Nat. Hist. Surv. Canada, Report for 1886 (1887), Pt. D. 



