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THE SANTA FE ROUTE. 43 
Beyond Hartland the valley is narrowed greatly by the encroach- 
ments of high lands on the north and of the wide belt of sand hills on 
the south. The plain to the north is nearly 200 feet 
Hartland. above the valley and is a smooth expanse character- 
oe t. istic of the Great Plains in general. Southwest of 
Kansas City hear ee Hartland the Government set aside a part of the sand 
s as a national forest for the cultivation of trees, 
but this area will be open to agricultural settlement after November, 
1915. Just west of Hartland is the well-known Chouteaus Island, 
at a ford across the Arkansas. Here, in 1817, a French trader named 
Chouteau took refuge from the Indians, finally escaping. It was in 
this vicinity that Maj. Riley encamped in 1829 with the battalion 
that formed the first caravan escort sent out by the United States. 
On the other side of the river the battalion was met by a Mexican 
escort dispatched by the Mexican Government. In 1828 a party of 
travelers cached $10,000 in silver at this place, being too exhausted 
to carry it farther. A year later they went back and recovered it. 
A short distance west of Hartland shale’ and limestone of Cre- 
taceous age rise above the valley bottom and continue in sight on the 
north side of the track far westward into Colorado. The surface 
on which the deposits of the Great Plains were laid down was in 
places somewhat irregular. In this vicinity there was a hill of Cre- 
taceous material to the west and a deep hollow in the region on the 
east, as has been disclosed by the excavation of the Arkansas Valley 
by later erosion through the Tertiary gravels into Cretaceous deposits. 
Two miles west of Hartland a slight arching up of the beds brings 
into view the Dakota sandstone, which crops out in a short line of 
low cliffs on the south bank of the river at the edge of the sand hills. 
North of the track in this vicinity, near milepost 437, a short distance 
east of Sutton siding, the railway is on the steep bank of the river 
and passes through deep cuts affording excellent exposures of the 
top beds of the Graneros shale, capped by the Greenhorn limestone 
at a plane about 20 feet above the tracks. These rocks are of Upper 
Cretaceous age. The shale is dark gray and mostly in thin layers. 
About 20 feet below its top are two hard layers consisting largely 
of shells of a small oyster (Ostrea congesta, a species which also 
occurs in large numbers in the Niobrara group). The overlying 
Greenhorn limestone, named from Greenhorn Creek, in Colorado, 
where it is extensively exposed, is soft and earthy 
Kendall. and weathers to a light-yellow tint. It crops out 
oe 123 feet. at intervals to Kendall and beyond, but near Mayline 
are 00 ‘sa miles, 20d for a short distance farther west is hidden by 
wash on the slopes and the gravel and sand of a 
narrow terrace which borders the valley in that vicinity. This gravel 
has been dug extensively for ballast for the railway in pits a short 
