DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 



201 



tives, and water was piped from them to the line of the road. For a 

 long time Thompson owed its prosperity to the water from these 

 springs and to the business which it obtained as a supply and ship- 

 ping point for the sheep owners in the region about Moab. an old 

 Mormon town on Colorado River, 32 miles to the southeast.®* 



Coal mines have recently been opened 5 miles up the canyon, and 

 the coal is brought to the railroad by a branch line. The coal is of 

 good quality but not quite so valuable as that which is mined in the 

 same formation farther west. 



The many salients of the Book Cliffs show well from Thompson. 

 By looking east or west along the front one can see point after 

 point projecting from the plateau, as shown in figure 54. The intri- 

 cate sculpture of the shale that composes the lower slopes of the 

 cliffs is well shown about a mile west of Thompson, By contrast 

 with the curves in the sculpture of the shale the angularity of the 

 forms of the land impresses the traveler more and more as he gazes 

 off to the southwest while he is passing over the plain just west of 

 Thompson. 'Seen from this plain the profiles of the distant plateaus 

 appear extremely angular and show no flowing curves. The land- 

 scape looks as if it had been formed by the hand of a giant who 

 carved it with an axe, cutting here and there great angular chunks 

 out of the flat-lying rocks. (See fig. 52, p. 198.) 



A short distance west of a siding called Crescent the railroad cuts 

 through a low ridge of shale, which is one of the remnants of the 

 higher surface, and then begins the long descent to Green River. 

 Immediately after cutting through the ridge the road turns to the 

 north, and for about 10 miles it skirts the front of the Book Cliffs, 



*^ It was the settled determination of 

 the early Mormon leaders to make their 

 followers an agricultural people, for 

 they knew that those who till the soil 

 can much more easily be held in an 

 organization like that of the Mormon 

 Church and are less likely to wander 

 away after " strange gods " than those 

 who are engaged in other pursuits. A 

 great empire was to be built, and its 

 most secure foundation was a large 

 and prosperous agricultural popula- 

 tion. 



The region in which they had settled 

 and which they regarded as the " prom- 

 ised land " was much like that of 

 .Tudea, in which the ancient Hebrews 

 flourished, a land consisting in large 

 part of deserts whose oases here and 

 there afforded fine opportunities for a 



pastoral people. Soon after the first 

 settlement of the valley of Great Salt 

 Lake, in 1847, immigrants began pour- 

 ing into Utah at the rate of several 

 thousand a year, and the leaders had 

 to find these oases and see that the 

 newcomers were settled therein. In 

 this work they were autocratic. 

 Brigham Young directed the settlement 

 of the valleys and even picked the fami- 

 lies and the leaders who were to settle 

 them. Nothing was left to chance. 

 The proceeding was high-handed, but 

 the results, as seen to-day, show that 

 it was probably the best that could 

 have been followed. Moab was one of 

 these distant colonies, and others were 

 established in southern Utah, Arizona, 

 and California, as well as in more 

 northern States. 



