156 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
could not be reached by the existing gravity lines. One of these 
plants supplies enough water to irrigate 2,300 acres of land and the 
other enough to irrigate 6,000 acres. The canals and pumping plants 
which the traveler has seen in Palisade Canyon are more extensive 
than any that he has seen heretofore on this journey, and he may 
wonder why so much money has been spent to obtain the water of 
Colorado River, but when he has passed out of the mouth of the 
canyon and has seen the wonderful change that the water has made 
in the one-time desert plain he will no longer question the wisdom 
of the expenditure. 
As the railroad makes a great bend to the west at the mouth of 
the canyon the traveler may notice some small coal mines that are 
operating on the lowest or Palisade coal bed. This coal bed, which 
ranges from 3 to 7 feet in thickness, overlies the sandstone that is 
regarded as forming the base of the Mesaverde formation. The coal 
bed and the sandstone are well exposed across the river, where a 
number of small mines have been opened to supply the local demand 
for fuel. Another small mine is also in operation just above the 
station at Palisade. The rocks here rise more rapidly than they do 
farther up in the canyon, and the lower slopes of the cliffs are com- 
posed of the marine shale (Mancos) that underlies the coal-bearing 
formation. : 
Near milepost 63 the canyon opens, and here begin the orchards 
of peaches, pears, apples, and other fruit that have made the town 
of Palisade famous. Its situation at the foot of the 
Palisade. Book Cliffs protects it from late frosts in spring 
Elevation 4,739 feet. and from early frosts in autumn, so that almost 
population °°. every foot of the land is under irrigation and has 
been planted with fruit trees. (See Pl. LXVII.) 
Every year hundreds of cars of fruit are shipped from this place. 
Here begins the great southward-facing cliff which in the early 
days was named Book Cliffs because of the fancied resemblance of 
the sandstone cap and the curved shale slope below to the edge of a 
bound book. A typical view of the Little Book Cliffs as they appear 
back of Palisade is given in Plate LX VIII. The Book Cliffs begin 
at Palisade and stretch westward to Castlegate, Utah, a distance of 
about 190 miles. They everywhere form the southern rim of the 
great trough of rocks on the north known as the Uinta Basin. Just 
west of Palisade the cliffs are formed and protected by a few beds of 
sandstone at the top, below which the slope consists of shale (Mancos) 
that was deposited there before the Rocky Mountains were in ex- 
istence, when the entire region was below the waters of the sea. 
These shale slopes have been intricately sculptured by the rain, 
and the traveler has many opportunities to examine them, for they are 
