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GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 



about level with the tops of the granite walls of the canyon. This 

 fact strongly corroborates the theory that the old valley was filled 

 with gravel that forced the river to the east, onto the granite upland. 

 Just after emerging from the canyon the traveler may get. on the 

 west (left), a magnificent view of a part of what is frequently 

 called the Collegiate Peaks or the Collegiate Range, from the fact 

 that the three most prominent summits visible from this part of the 

 valley are known as Princeton, Yale, and Harvard.-^ The view on 

 the left also includes Mount Shavano, which is the next high peak 

 south of Mount Princeton. These peaks are peculiarlj" situated, as 

 they do not form a part of the Continental Divide but stand dis- 

 tinctly east of that crest, and the larger streams heading in the range 

 cut through this outer line of peaks in great canyons that are very 



Figure 22. — Mount Yale from Nathrop. 



striking features. One of the deepest of these cuts, the canyon of 

 Chalk Creek, which the traveler may see on the left, separates Mount 

 Shavano on the south from Mount Princeton on the north. The 

 view of Mount Yale as seen from this point and represented in 

 the sketch (fig. 22) is the best to be obtained from the rail- 

 road, for north of this point the big shoulder on the east side 



^ The history of the naming of these 

 peaks is given below in the words of 

 Prof. AV. M. Davis, of Harvard Uni- 

 versity : 



In the summer of 1869 Prof. J. D. 

 "Wliitney visited the Rocky Mountains 

 of Colorado with a small party, in- 

 cluding four of his students (Archi- 

 bald R. Mai-vine, Heni*y Gannett, 

 Joseph H. Bridges, and William M. 

 Davis) in the mining school at Har- 

 vard. His object was chiefly to deter- 

 mine the altitude of the loftiest ranges 

 that he could reach, regarding which 

 a brief report was published in Peter- 



mann's Mitteilungen (1871). The 

 highest summit that he found (14,399 

 feet), was in the Sa watch Range west 

 of the upper Arkansas Valley and 

 was named Mount Harvard, after 

 the university in which he was then 

 teaching ; while the next higher sum- 

 mit immediately to the south in the 

 same range (14,172 feet), was named 

 Mount Yale, after the university 

 from which he graduated 30 years 

 before. The name Mount Princeton 

 was given a few years later to the 

 fine mass (14,177 feet) next south of 

 Mount Yale. 



