DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 151 
A short distance west of the station at De Beque the railroad crosses 
Roan Creek, and beyond for some distance it runs through a rolling 
country, most of which is irrigated and contains good farms. The 
river bottom on the east (left), which occasionally may be seen from 
the train, is also largely under cultivation, and beyond it the high- 
land rises, terrace above terrace, up to the crest of Battlement Mesa. 
The intricate lines of sculpture that are carved by the rains in the 
soft shale or clay where it is not protected by a cover of vegetation 
or of broken rock are well shown in some badland buttes composed of 
maroon shale and clay of the Wasatch formation, a little more than 
2 miles west of De Beque. (See Pl. LXV, A.) If the light is just 
right to bring out the minute lines the entire surface of the buttes 
will appear to be made up of a series of rill marks that resemble the 
delicate fretwork of an artist. (See route map, sheet 6, p. 182.) 
The rocks across which the traveler has been passing since he left 
Newcastle are bent into a great downfold or troughlike depression 
(syncline) whose east rim is composed of the coal-bearing sandstone 
(Mesaverde) that forms the Grand Hogback. Figure 37 (p. 148) 
represents the section across this trough as it is exposed by Colorado 
River. The other rim of the trough is crossed by the railroad be- 
tween De Beque and Palisade, and through this rim the river has 
cut a deep and narrow canyon very different from the gap through 
the hogback at Newcastle. It is here called Palisade Canyon.** As 
the rocks are the same at both places the explanation of the difference 
in the appearance of the gaps cut by the river must be sought in the 
difference in the attitude of the beds, or, in other words, in the 
amount of their dip. At Newcastle the thick bed of sandstone dips 
steeply toward the west, and as it is underlain by softer rocks it 
weathers into a sharp ridge, which can be traced for 50 miles to the 
north and is known as the Grand Hogback. The dip of the beds on 
the other rim of the trough is very slight, generally not over 10°, 
and the river cuts through the rim for 16 miles in a canyon that 
increases in depth as it approaches the outer margin of the sandstone. 
Figure 37 (p. 148) represents the rocks as they would appear in a 
deep trench cut along the line of the railroad. Above the coal-bear- 
ing rocks lies the maroon Wasatch, and in the middle and overlying 
all the other beds, and consequently younger than the others, are 
the white beds of the Green River formation, but these do not appear 
near Palisade Canyon. 
“So far as the writer is aware this | ridge of slightly dipping rocks across 
canyon has been called by no name | which the canyon is cut is not a typical 
except “ Hogback Canyon,” which ap- | hogback, and as the name has never 
Dears several times in the Hayden re- | become current it seems appropriate to 
ports, printed about 1875. That name | give the canyon the name of Palisade 
was never strictly appropriate, for the | Canyon, from the town of Palisade. 
