180 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 



(left) as he approaches Delta. This mesa is served with water by 

 canals which divert it from Uncompahgre River at a place far up the 

 valley. Delta is the county seat of Delta County 

 ^®^*** and was so named because it stands on the delta 



Elevation 4,980 feet, formed where Uncompahgrre River enters Gunnison 



ropulation 2,623. , i % z-i , -. r , 



Denver 373 miles. River. 1 he south slope of (jrrand Mesa, the table- 

 land to the north, is one of the most noted fruit- 

 growing regions of western Colorado. The orchards on this south- 

 ward-facing slope are protected from frost in much the same manner 

 as those at Palisade, so that fine crops of apples, peaches, and other 

 fruit are produced here almost every year. The towns of Hotchkiss, 

 Paonia, Cedaredge, and Austin are particularly noted for their excel- 

 lent fruit, which is carried to Delta on a standard-gage branch road 

 and thence shipped to other markets. Considerable coal is mined at 

 Somerset, the terminus of this branch, and finds a ready market in 

 the Uncompahgre Valley. 



From Cimarron to Delta the railroad runs entirely on the Mancos 

 shale, to which are due the breadth of the valley and the smoothness 

 of its sides. At Delta the shale lies in a great structural trough — a 

 syncline, as it is called by geologists — whose eastern edge rests on the 

 flank of Vernal Mesa and whose western edge rests on the Un- 

 compahgre Plateau. Below Delta the railroad changes its course 

 from west of north to almost due west, and it therefore soon reaches 

 the edge of this shale valley and enters a canyon cut in the underlying 

 sandstone. 



A short distance from the station at Delta the railroad crosses Un- 

 compahgre River and then runs along the bank of Gunnison River, 

 which the traveler has not seen since he left Black Canyon. Here 

 the Grand Mesa is in full view to the north (right). All the lower 

 slopes of this mesa are composed of the Mancos shale, which is so 

 soft that it generally forms valleys wherever it is exposed, but the 

 shale in the mesa is protected by overlying sandstone that is capped 

 by a thick sheet of solidified lava (basalt). When this lava was 

 poured out the present lowlands had not been cut, and the whole 

 surface stood at the same level as that of the top of Grand Mesa. 

 The volcano or volcanic vent from which this great flow was ejected 

 has not been definitely located, but it may have been at a considerable 

 distance, for this sheet is probably a part of the great lava flow that 

 covered much of this general region, a flow whose remnants can still 

 be seen on Grand Mesa and Battlement Mesa, to the north, on the 

 Flattops, north of Glenwood Springs, and on other high mesas. If 

 these remnants are not a part of a single flow they are i^robably parts 

 of independent flows that occurred at about the same time. As the 

 West Elk Mountains, east of Somerset, were a center of great volcanic 



