Sie es a ee eee 
DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 201 
tives, and water was piped from them to the line of the road. For a 
long time Thompson owed its prosperity to the water from these 
springs and to the business which it obtained as a supply and ship- 
ping point for the sheep owners in the region about Moab, an old 
Mormon town on Colorado River, 32 miles to the southeast.*4 
Coal mines have recently been opened 5 miles up the canyon, and 
the coal is brought to the railroad by a branch line. The coal is of 
good quality but not quite so valuable as that which is mined in the 
same formation farther west. 
The many salients of the Book Cliffs show well from Thompson. 
By looking east or west along the front one can see point after 
point projecting from the plateau, as shown in figure 54. The intri- 
cate sculpture of the shale that composes the lower slopes of the 
cliffs is well shown about a mile west of Thompson. By contrast 
with the curves in the sculpture of the shale the angularity of the 
forms of the land impresses the traveler more and more as he gazes 
off to the southwest while he is passing over the plain just west of 
Thompson. ‘Seen from this plain the profiles of the distant plateaus 
appear extremely angular and show no flowing curves. The land- 
Scape looks as if it had been formed by the hand of a giant who 
carved it with an axe, cutting here and there great angular chunks 
out of the fiat-lying rocks. (See fig. 52, p. 198.) 
A short distance west of a siding called Crescent the railroad cuts 
through a low ridge of shale, which is one of the remnants of the 
higher surface, and then begins the long descent to Green River. 
Immediately after cutting through the ridge the road turns to the 
north, and for about 10 miles it skirts the front of the Book Cliffs, 
“It was the settled determination of ; pastoral people. Soon after the first 
the early Mormon leaders to make their | settlement of the valley of Great Salt 
followers an agricultural ple, for | Lake, in 1847, immigrants began pour- 
they knew that those who till the soil | ing into Utah at the rate of several 
ch more easily be held in an | thousand a year, and the leaders had 
organization like that of the Mormon | to find these oases and see that pe 
Church and are less likely to wander | newcomers were settled therein, a4 
‘way after “strange gods” than those | this work they were pb fla, 
who are engaged in other pursuits. A | Brigham Young directed the i smu 2 
great empire was to be built, and its | of the valleys and even picked the — 
secure foundation was a large | lies and the ieaders who gti sy 
and prosperous agricultural popula- | them. Nothing was left to ¢ = : 
tion, The proceeding was high-handed, on 
The region in which they had settled | the results, as seen to-day, “ge pan 
and which they regarded as the “ prom- | it was probably the best tha 
ised land” was 
uch like 
Judea, in which the ancient Hebrews | these distant colonies, and niger a 
flourished, a land consisting in large | established in southern Utah, oi 
Part of deserts whose oases here and | and California, as W 
there afforded fine opportunities for a | northern States. 
