74 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
westward to a point about 3 miles beyond the small village of Coto- 
paxi, a distance of 34 miles. 
On leaving the station the traveler sees on “tks south (left) the 
station which marks the end of this branch of the Santa Fe Railway. 
He is now at the place where the great railroad war was waged from 
1876 to 1879, and after seeing the canyon he will understand fully 
that it is hardly possible for two roads to occupy this narrow gash 
in the rocks, and consequently each road made its supreme endeavor 
to be first to build through the canyon. In the 40 years that this 
road has been in operation thousands of travelers from all parts 
of the world have passed through the gorge and have admired its 
awful grandeur. 
About a mile from the station the traveler may see on the north 
(right) the State penitentiary with its well-kept grounds, at the 
extreme farthest point of which is Iron Spring, one of the attractive 
features of Canon City. The pavilion that covers the spring may 
be seen on the right, and just opposite is the power plant, which at 
times fills the beautiful clear air with a dense pall of smoke. This 
dense cloud of black smoke should not be permitted, for when the 
wind is from the east it drifts up the track and conceals much of the 
beauty of the Royal Gorge. The rocky ledge that is exposed a few 
feet beyond the spring is the Dakota sandstone, which marks the base 
of the Upper Cretaceous series. This sandstone is the most re- 
sistant bed in the series of rocks here upturned, and it therefore 
stands up as a sharp-crested ridge or hogback, which extends for a 
long distance across the valley parallel with the mountain front. 
About 2 miles south of the river there is a great break (fault) in the 
beds of rock, separating those of the mountains from those of the 
plains, and the Dakota hogback ends against this fault. poe the 
summit of the hogback, which in places is wide enough ‘only for a 
road, the famous Skyline Drive (shown in Pl. XX XV) has been 
constructed. 
From the Dakota sandstone és the mountain front the beds are all 
steeply upturned, but their position can not be made out very well 
from the train. These beds of sandstone and limestone once doubt- 
less extended at least as far west as Parkdale, and when the mountain 
was uplifted they were bowed up in a great curve, as suggested in 
figure 16 (p. 80), but the streams cut into these uplifted rocks very 
actively and in course of time removed them and even cut down 
hundreds of feet into the massive granite on which they rest. The 
first formation below the Dakota is the Morrison, which forms the 
west side of the hogback. It consists of variegated shale and sand- 
stone, in which green and red beds predominate. It is in this forma- 
tion that the bones of the giant reptile described on page 70 and 
shown in Plate XXXII, A, were found. 
