DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 139 
rocks here are the red sandstone and the Gunnison formation, neither 
one of which contains coal. The mine is about 1} miles up South 
Canyon, in the Mesaverde formation, the great coal-bearing forma- 
tion of western Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. In the old geologic 
reports this formation was called “Laramie,” a formation at the 
extreme top of the Cretaceous system, but it is now known to be 
very much older than the Laramie and has been named the Mesa- 
verde formation, from the Mesa Verde (may’sa vair’day, Spanish for 
“green table”), in the extreme southwest corner of the State— 
a mesa that has now been set aside as a national park on account of 
its ruined cliff dwellings. The coal is brought from the mine in 
‘tram cars. 
For about 2 miles below the coal tipple the river follows in a gen- 
eral way the outcrops of the formations, the alternating red and 
= 
a 
Pare 
FIGURE 35.—Top of red sandstone (Triassic), forming crest of hill below South Canon 
Coal Co.’s coal tipple. Beds dip southwest. 
white beds on the mountain side on the left and the beds of solid 
red color on the right. The beds of sandstone dip steeply to the west, 
and they stand above the railroad on the right in great slabs 20 or 
feet high. The surface of these slabs is covered with ripple marks 
identical with those now being formed in shallow water along the 
coast, which indicates that the red sand forming these rocks was 
washed into some shallow basin where it was distinctly rippled by 
each passing wave. These ripples may have been made millions of 
years ago, yet they are as perfect as if they had been made but 
yesterday, 
A little below the exposure of ripple-marked sandstone the top of 
the bright-red sandstone (Triassic) is well shown in a hill across 
the river. (See fig. 35.) 
