74 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 



westward to a. point about 3 miles beyond the small village of Coto- 

 paxi, a distance of 34 miles. 



On leaving the station the traveler sees on the south (left) the 

 station which marks the end of this branch of the Santa Fe Railway. 

 He is now at the place where the great railroad war was waged from 

 1876 to 1879, and after seeing the canyon he will understand fully 

 that it is hardly possible for two roads to occupy this narrow gash 

 in the rocks, and consequently each road made its supreme endeavor 

 to be first to build through the canyon. In the 40 years that this 

 road has been in operation thousands of travelers from all parts 

 of the world have passed through the gorge and have admired its 

 awful grandeur. 



About a mile from the station the traveler may see on the north 

 (right) the State penitentiary with its well-kept grounds, at the 

 extreme farthest point of which is Iron Spring, one of the attractive 

 features of Canon City. The pavilion that covers the spring may 

 be seen on the right, and just opposite is the power plant, which at 

 times fills the beautiful clear air with a dense pall of smoke. This 

 dense cloud of black smoke should not be permitted, for when the 

 wind is from the east it drifts up the track and conceals much of the 

 beauty of the Royal Gorge. The rocky ledge that is exposed a few 

 feet beyond the spring is the Dakota sandstone, which marks the base 

 of the Upper Cretaceous series. This sandstone is the most re- 

 sistant bed in the series of rocks here upturned, and it therefore 

 stands up as a sharp-crested ridge or hogback, which extends for a 

 long distance across the valley parallel with the mountain front. 

 About 2 miles south of the river there is a great break (fault) in the 

 beds of rock, separating those of the mountains from those of the 

 plains, and the Dakota hogback ends against this fault. Along the 

 sunmiit of the hogback, which in places is wide enough only for a 

 road, the famous Skyline Drive (shown in PI. XXXV) has been 

 constructed. 



From the Dakota sandstone to the mountain front the beds are all 

 steeply upturned, but their position can not be made out very well 

 from the train. These beds of sandstone and limestone once doubt- 

 less extended at least as far west as Parkdale, and when the mountain 

 was uplifted they were bowed up in a great curve, as suggested in 

 figure 16 (p. 80), but the streams cut into these uplifted rocks very 

 actively and in course of time removed them and even cut down 

 hundreds of feet into the massive granite on which they rest. The 

 first formation below the Dakota is the Morrison, which forms the 

 west side of the hogback. It consists of variegated shale and sand- 

 stone, in which green and red beds predominate. It is in this forma- 

 tion that the bones of the giant reptile described on page 70 and 

 shown in Plate XXXII, A, were found. 



