GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 
PART C. THE SANTA FE ROUTE, WITH A SIDE TRIP TO 
THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO. 
By N. H. Darron and others. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In going from Kansas City to Los Angeles, a distance of nearly 1,800 
miles, by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway the traveler sees 
a wide diversity of geographic and industrial conditions. First he 
crosses the Great Plains, which extend for 500 miles, to the foothills 
of the Rocky Mountains. In the eastern part of these plains the 
rainfall is ample for crops, so that nearly all the land is in farms and 
the population is moderately dense. Toward the west the climate 
becomes increasingly arid and farms give place to scattered cattle 
ranches, except along some of the watercourses where irrigation is 
practicable. Running streams and groves of trees are numerous in 
the eastern part, but the watercourses in the western part are much 
smaller and many of them are dry in summer, and the principal trees 
are cottonwoods, which grow along some of the valleys. 
The Rocky Mountain province is skirted by the railway from 
Trinidad, Colo., to Las Vegas, N. Mex., and is finally passed between 
Las Vegas and Lamy. It consists of a succession of high rocky 
ridges rising abruptly 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the Great Plains. On 
account of their great altitude these mountains receive considerable 
precipitation and in large part are forested up to timber line, which is 
at an elevation of about 11,000 feet. The rocks are steeply tilted, 
and in most of the area the granites and schists of the old earth crust 
have been pushed far upward and constitute the high central ranges. 
Over the higher parts of the uplift the sandstones and limestones 
under which the granites and schists were originally buried have been 
largely removed by the elements. Between Las Vegas and Lamy 
the railway crosses the north end of the great Corona Plateau, a high 
table-land between the Pecos and the Rio Grande which lies south of 
the Rocky Mountains and is related to the plateau province west of 
the Rio Grande. 
Beyond the Rocky Mountains the traveler crosses the Rio Grande 
and enters the great Colorado Plateau province, which extends west- 
ward across New Mexico and far into Arizona, and many miles to the 
north and south. In this province sedimentary rocks predominate, in 
large part lying nearly horizontal, so that the harder layers constitute 
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