106 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



to northeasterly. It will be noted that these changes in dip and strike 

 indicate a great anticlinal fold. Long ago the Hayden Survey named 

 the high ridges of Mesa Verde sandstone extending from Grand River 

 to White River the "Grand Hogback," a name which is quite appro- 

 priate and still clings to it, though some of the formation names then 

 applied have been superseded by others. 



Meeker is in the broad valley of White River. The valley here 

 occupies the Mancos formation, with the Mesa Verde bluffs to the 

 north (Fig. n) and the Dakota sandstone to the south. On the south 

 side of the valley are several terraces, telling unmistakably of various 

 periods of renewed erosion, as if base level had several times been 

 reached, followed by a renewal of activity from fresh uplift. These 

 terraces were traced far up White River. The lower bottom-lands are 

 extensively irrigated and used as hay lands from Meeker up to within 

 six miles of Trapper's Lake. 



The route from Meeker to Axial was chiefly through gulches cut in 

 the Mesa Verde sandstones. From Meeker to Little Beaver Creek, on 

 the other hand, was chiefly in the Mancos. Returning from Little 

 Beaver Creek to the main road and proceeding up White River, we at 

 once broke through the Dakota sandstone into the underlying sand- 

 stones, limestones and clays, chiefly of a reddish color, probably mostly 

 representing Jurassic and late Carboniferous time with possibly some 

 Triassic or Permian, though we found no paleontological evidence of 

 their age. The greater part of the valley is likely in Carboniferous 

 rocks. Marvine Creek is in amygdaloidal basalt, which appears to 

 extend across to Trapper's Lake in a continuous sheet several hundred 

 feet in thickness. 



The White River Plateau is the broad, rolling, partly dissected divide 

 which separates the White River canyon from the canyon of the Grand 

 River. It was long ago described 1 as "a lava-capped mesa, irregular 

 and cut by deep canyons and valleys, which often nearly subdivide 

 it ... . with surface irregularly rolling. " 



The region affords excellent examples of the persistence of perennial 

 streams, as where Rifle Creek at Rifle Gap (Fig. 9) and White River 



1 Ladd, Story B., Eighth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. and Geog. Surv. Terr., p. 437. 



