94 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
parallel with them. The men were eager to climb the mountains, 
explore their wonderful peaks and valleys, and see the country that 
lay beyond, but a few days of hard climbing up the rocky slopes 
satisfied them that they could not reach the summit of the range 
in a short time and that mountain climbing was not so easy as it 
appeared from a distance; so they were content to proceed south- 
ward along nearly the route that is now followed by the Denver & 
Rio Grande Western Railroad. The entrance to the canyon may be 
seen from the train, but, owing to its many bends, the canyon does 
not appear to be an open cut through the mountain front. 
In many places at the foot of the mountains the steeply dipping 
sandstone forms sharp hogbacks, which may be seen from the mov- 
ing train, and, as the sandstone is mostly red, the traveler will soon 
learn to associate red sandstone and hogbacks with the foothills of 
the mountain front. These beds are very prominent near the mouth 
of Plum Creek and may be seen to good advantage from milepost 17, 
about 14 miles up the creek. 
The scenery of the lower part of the valley of Plum Creek is 
smooth and uninteresting. The surface is a rolling upland, which 
can not be irrigated from the South Platte because it lies too high 
above that river, and it consequently appears rather barren to those 
who are accustomed to a more humid climate. 
station in this part of the valley is Louviers, which is merely a ship- 
ping point for the DuPont Powder Co., whose plant for the manu- 
facture of high explosives is on the west (right) of the track. 
Above Louviers Plum Creek swings eastward, and it is bordered 
on its east side by bluffs and mesas of white sandstone.*° Although 
The only railroad 
* All the rock seen near the railroad 
track from Denver to a point beyond 
Palmer Lake is composed of fragments 
derived from the decomposition of the 
granite and gneiss of the mountains. 
This material, which consists ent nf 
of quartz and feldspar, is know 
geologists as arkose. The fo seat 
is called the Tewaen arkose, and it is 
of the same geologic age as the forma- 
tions about Denver that have been 
called the Denver and Arapahoe for- 
mations. chardson, in the Castle 
Rock soe (No. 198) of the Geologic 
Atlas of the wee States, describes 
the rock as follow 
Dawson arkose, derived from 
r * 
continental conditions, chiefly as wash 
and fluviatile [stream] deposits accom- 
panied by local ponding. During the 
accumulation of the arkose this region 
may be conceived of as a piedmont 
rea 
in which the vegetation was character-— 
ized by the presence of man 
palms, Magnolias, poplars, 
oaks, maples, etc., and which was occu- 
ed by Triceratops 
horned dinosaurs) 
and other reptiles and by primitive 
mammals,” 
Km} 
te 
In other words, the material derived 
from the mountains was carried out on 
a nearly flat surface and deposited by 
the streams in much the same way 45 
the streams of to-day are carrying the 
waste of the mountain rocks and 
spreading it over the low parts of the 
plains. : 
* 
