184 GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTERN UNITED STATES. 



mileage of the railroad much more than it would be if the course 

 were fairly straight. 



As meanders like those in which the Gunnison flows in this canyon 

 could not have been begun while the river was cutting the canyon 

 they must have been there before the canyon was cut, and as geolo- 

 gists are agreed that such meanders can be formed only by a slug- 

 gish stream, the Gunnison of the time when these meanders were 

 young was not so rapid as it is to-day ; it was a lazy river that flowed 

 slowly and wound about in the broad valley in which it was flowing. 

 The meanders were therefore formed when this part of the country 

 was essentially a shale plain, above which only here and there moun- 

 tains lifted their heads. As already stated, such a plain is supposed 

 to have been in existence when the lava that now caps Grand Mesa 

 was poured out, so that the meanders which the traveler sees to-day 

 in the river were probably formed when it was flowing at a level 

 a mile higher than it is now, before any of the sandstones that now 

 form the walls of its canyons were exposed. According to this in- 

 terpretation the meanders are very old and are simply inherited from 

 the former channel of the river. 



Near milepost 420 the Gunnison formation disappears below the 

 river, and from this point down to the junction of Gunnison River 

 with Colorado River it appears only in places, and the canyon is cut 

 mainly in the sandstone, shale, and coal beds of the lower Mancos. 

 The height of the walls also declines, and finally, after skirting the 

 bluff on the right for a considerable distance, the train passes through 

 a small cut and crosses the bridge spanning Colorado River and is 

 soon at the station in Grand Junction. 



Grand Junction is one of the largest towns of western Colorado. 

 It stands at the junction of the main line of the Denver & Rio 

 Grande Western Railroad and the line over Mar- 

 shall Pass, on the flat plain at the junction of Gun- 

 ropuiaTion 8,665.*^ uison and Colorado rivers, and is therefore on the 

 Denver 424 miles (via natural route of railroad travel. Colorado River 

 especially carries a large volume of water, and as its 

 fall above Grand Junction is considerable it affords an excellent 

 supply of water for irrigation. Water has been taken from the river 

 for this purpose by many private companies, but generally it has been 

 taken out only a short distance above the land to be irrigated, and 

 consequently it has neither sufficient head nor volume to irrigate all 

 the land adjacent to the town. Recently the United States Reclama- 

 tion Service has dammed Colorado River 20 miles above Grand Junc- 

 tion and is carrying the water in the High Line canal (see p. 152) to 

 the terrace or bench land back from the river and near the foot of 

 the Book Cliffs. 



