ORIGIN AND DEFINITION OF THE TERM “LARAMIE” 535 
of this trip he describes the exposures along the Overland Stage Road, 
and among the beds which he studied, and then referred to the Lig- 
nitic, there are none which are now known to belong to the Lower 
Laramie, or the ‘‘true Laramie” of recent geologic literature. He 
states that he found “‘great quantities of deciduous leaves” (which 
“indicate the Tertiary age of the rocks, and also show that they jut 
far up close to the foothills of the mountains’’) in strata which are now 
known to be Upper Laramie and which in that immediate region rest 
unconformably on all beds down to the Dakota. ‘The preponderance 
of evidence indicates that it was from this locality on the overland 
trail just west of Rock Creek that he obtained the leaves identified 
by Lesquereux as from “Rock Creek, Laramie Plains,’’ which are 
clearly Upper Laramie. He also examined the strata and collected 
leaves from the Upper Laramie beds at a point just north of Medicine 
Bow stage station (now Elk Mountain post-office). The Upper 
Laramie beds at this point rest on the Lewis shales, which because 
of the coal-bearing character of the underlying Mesa Verde beds 
Hayden at this time included in his Tertiary. 
Along the railroad he found only Cretaceous outcrops until he 
reached a point 5 miles east of Como, where he reports a sandstone 
“with fragments of stems and leaves,’’ which he at first thought was 
probably lower Tertiary.‘ Continuing, he says: 
From a point about 10 miles west? of Como to St. Mary’s Station . . . . the 
Tertiary formations occupy the country with the peculiar sands and sandstone and 
clays, and numerous coal-beds. The most marked development of the coal-beds 
is at Carbon Station, about 80 miles west of Laramie Station. .... In the beds 
above and below the coal are thousands of impressions of deciduous leaves, as 
Populus, Platanus, Tilia, etc. Some of the layers of rocks 2 to 4 inches in thick- 
242-49; reprinted in First, Second, and Third Annual Reports, U.S. Geological Survey 
of the Territories (1873), pp. 89-96; Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 
Vol. XI (1869), pp. 28-38, 54, 55. 
t This sandstone is low in the Cretaceous, and on second thought Hayden referred 
it to the Cretaceous (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. X1 [1869], 
p- 370°. He re-examined the locality in 1870 and again referred it to the Cretaceous. 
2 In the original this reads ‘‘east,’”’? but when compared with the statement that 
the Cretaceous rocks continue to a point about 5 miles east of Como, and when con- 
sidered in connection with the general lay of the country it undoubtedly should be 
“west.”’ It is changed to ‘‘west”’ in the reports for 1870 ([Fourth Annual] Preliminary 
Report, U. S. Geological Survey of Wyoming [1871], p. 164). 
