ORIGIN AND DEFINITION OF THE TERM “LARAMIE” 537 
distance. Cretaceous beds, mostly No. 2, appear again west of Como. Miocene 
coal-beds overlay the Cretaceous just before reaching Carbon Station, 80 miles 
west of Laramie. At Carbon, where they are exposed to view, impressions of 
fossil leaves occur in the greatest abundance. The species are few, and nearly 
all of them identical with those described by Dr. Newberry, from the Miocene 
Tertiary beds of the Upper Missouri. Some strata consist almost entirely of leaves, 
in a fair state of preservation, as if they had not been subjected to a great deal of 
drifting prior to deposition. Indeed the trees themselves must have grown near the 
spot, to shed their leaves in such great abundance, just as we find leaves accumu- 
lated now in muddy bottoms. Dr. Newberry has identified from this locality, 
Populus cuneata, Populus Nebrascensis, Platanus haydeni, and an undescribed 
species of Cornus. "The Wyoming Coal Company’s shaft, sunk at this station to 
reach the coal, has descended nearly 60 feet through a considerable thickness of 
bluish-black arenaceous clay, in rather thick layers, upon the surface of which 
are great quantities of Populus and Platanus. Very nearly the same species are 
described [found] throughout a great thickness of these Tertiary beds, and the 
evidence seems to be pretty clear that the vegetation was nearly uniform throughout 
the period of the deposition of the coal strata.t 
Although Hayden did not work in this region in 1869, he referred 
to the area in his “ Review of the Leading Groups” in his report for 
this year. In this account he definitely refers the beds on the Laramie 
Plains (and for the first time) to “the great lignite group,’”? and indi- 
cates that in the region west of the Laramie Plains he considers it 
limited above by the Washakie group. 
In 1870 Hayden, starting at Cheyenne, traveled northward to the 
Platte River, and thence westward along the old emigrant road 
through Smith Pass to Fort Bridger. Returning, he followed the 
Overland Stage Road up Bitter Creek Valley through Bridger Pass 
to Laramie City, and then re-examined the geology along the line of 
the railroad west of that point. In the report for this year he still 
refers some of the Montana and older Cretaceous sandstones contain- 
ing coal-beds to the Tertiary, but there is evidence of a growing sus- 
picion that they may be Cretaceous.3 He even goes to far as to say: 
“The evidence seems to point to the Cretaceous age of the coal group 
' Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. XI (1869), pp. 54-55. 
2 “ Along the line of the Union Pacific Railroad we find in the Laramie Plains a 
most extensive exhibition of the great lignite group.”—{Third Annual] Preliminary 
Field Report, U. S. Geological Survey of Colorado and New Mexico (1869), p. go. 
.3[Fourth Annual] Preliminary Report, U. S. Geological Survey of Wyoming 
for 1870, 1871, p. 165. 
