214 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
At this point the river also changes its course, coming out of the 
Book Cliffs in a course nearly due south. The valley continues nar- 
row, with shale bluffs and a narrow strip of irrigated bottom land. 
Just beyond milepost 625 a branch line on the east (right) leads to 
Kenilworth, a mining town that produces a notable part of the coal 
shipped from this region. About a mile farther north, in a valley 
so narrow as scarcely to provide room for a single 
Helper. street, is the railroad town of Helper, which was so 
Blevation 5,840 feet. hatiied because here are vs ts the reo engines that 
Population 
Denver 627 miles, | Serve the regular trains as “helpers” up the heavy 
grade north of the town. The town is at the mouth 
of the canyon that Price River has cut in the plateau of which the 
Book Cliffs are the front. These cliffs loom up 1,500 feet above the 
station and seem to interpose a blank wall against the further 
progress of the railroad, but like many other things in this world 
their appearance is deceptive, for the railroad has succeeded in fol- 
lowing the stream through the narrow cleft. A view of the cliffs 
from above is shown in Plate LXXXYVI, @. 
The canyon above Helper shows at close range the character of the 
coal-bearing (Mesaverde) formation. The lower part of the cliff 
overlooking Helper is composed mainly of shale (Mancos), which 
originated in the sea and therefore contains no coal. The rocks above 
this shale are mainly sandstones, but there are also many beds of 
shale, and in places there are coal beds, which range in thickness from 
a few inches to as much as 20 feet. An old prospect in one of the thick 
beds is shown in Plate LX XX, B (p. 195). The coal beds, however 
thick they may be, can not generally be seen from the car windows, 
for they are the softest members of the formation and consequently 
weather back faster than either the shale or the sandstone, so that 
their outcrop becomes covered with soil and broken rock. Sandstone 
makes up the greater part of the formation, and its general color is 
light gray or nearly white. It has been described as red, but this is a 
mistake, as the formation contains no red sandstone, though a ledge 
on weathering becomes a rusty brown, or if a coal bed below it has 
been burned it may have become a bright red, but these are not the 
inherent colors of the sandstone.7° 
*The following description of the 
coal beds and the associated rocks in 
the vicinity of agar cee is given by 
Frank R. Clark 
At the mouth of Price River canyon 
nearly vertical cliffs of sandstone 
and shale rise 1,500 feet above 
the river bed. These cliffs are capped 
by beds of sandstone that form the 
lower part of the Mesaverde forma- 
tion. The beds that compose the cliffs 
were laid down in fresh water or on 
the land. They rest upon soft dark 
pea (Mancos), which was laid down 
a Shallow sea that covered most of 
the The line between these 
formations is generally drawn at the 
base of the heavy ledge sand- 
