DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 



151 



A short distance west of the station at De Beque the railroad crosses 

 Eoan Creek, and beyond for some distance it runs through a rolling 

 country, most of which is irrigated and contains good farms. The 

 river bottom on the east (left) , which occasionally may be seen from 

 the train, is also largely under cultivation, and beyond it the high- 

 land rises, terrace above terrace, up to the crest of Battlement Mesa. 



The intricate lines of sculpture that are carved by the rains in the 

 soft shale or clay where it is not protected by a cover of vegetation 

 or of broken rock are well shown in some badland buttes composed of 

 maroon shale and clay of the Wasatch formation, a little more than 

 2 miles west of De Beque. (See PI. LXV, A.) If the light is just 

 right to bring out the minute lines the entire surface of the buttes 

 will appear to be made up of a series of rill marks that resemble the 

 delicate fretwork of an artist. (See route map, sheet 6, p. 182.) 



The rocks across which the traveler has been passing since he left 

 Newcastle are bent into a great downfold or troughlike depression 

 (syncline) whose east rim is composed of the coal-bearing sandstone 

 (Mesaverde) that forms the Grand Hogback. Figure 37 (p. 148) 

 represents the section across this trough as it is exposed by Colorado 

 Eiver. The other rim of the trough is crossed by the railroad be- 

 tween De Beque and Palisade, and through this rim the river has 

 cut a deep and narrow canyon very different from the gap through 

 the hogback at Newcastle. It is here called Palisade Canyon.*^ As 

 the rocks are the same at both places the explanation of the difference 

 in the appearance of the gaps cut by the river must be sought in the 

 difference in the attitude of the beds, or, in other words, in the 

 amount of their dip. At Newcastle the thick bed of sandstone dips 

 steeply toward the west, and as it is underlain by softer rocks it 

 weathers into a sharp ridge, which can be traced for 50 miles to the 

 north and is known as the Grand Hogback. The dip of the beds on 

 the other rim of the trough is very slight, generally not over 10°, 

 and the river cuts through the rim for 16 miles in a canyon that 

 increases in depth as it approaches the outer margin of the sandstone. 

 Figure 37 (p. 148) represents the rocks as they would appear in a 

 deep trench cut along the line of the railroad. Above the coal-bear- 

 ing rocks lies the maroon Wasatch, and in the middle and overlying 

 all the other beds, and consequently younger than the others, are 

 the white beds of the Green River formation, but these do not appear 

 near Palisade Canyon. 



*" So far as the writer is aware this 

 canyon has been called by no name 

 except " Hogback Canyon," which ap- 

 pears several times in the Hayden re- 

 ports, printed about 1875. That name 

 was never strictly appropriate, for the 



ridge of slightly dipping rocks across 

 which the canyon is cut is not a typical 

 hogback, and as the name has never 

 become current it seems appropriate to 

 give the canyon the name of Palisade 

 Canyon, from the town of Palisade. 



