DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 



231 



Mapleton. 



Elevation 4.724 feet. 

 Population 586. 

 Denver 601 miles. 



and beyond it are the barren slopes of the Oquirrh Mountains 

 (o'queer). Most of these desert ranges are not very high, but they 

 are striking features, for they rise, island-like, out of a wide expanse 

 of desert. 



The plain upon which the railroad is built is another of the nu- 

 merous unnamed terraces that mark the shore line of Lake Bonne- 

 ville and represent pauses of longer or shorter duration in the grad- 

 ual lowering of the water in the basin. This is well 

 developed about the station of Mapleton. The view 

 from the railroad at this point is particularly fine 

 because it embraces what appears to be the bottom 

 of the valley, so wide is it and so completely culti- 

 vated. On the right stands the great blank wall of the mountains, 

 across whose front the Bonneville shore line (see PI. LXXXIX, A) 

 can be seen as a mere thread separating the slopes above — char- 

 acterized by gashes cut by streams — from those below, in which all 

 roughness and angularity have been concealed by the material de- 

 posited in the ancient lake. Along the foot of the slope, within the 

 irrigated lands, stretches a belt of sloping plain on which most of 

 the homes of the region are built. Each house has its protecting row 

 of slender poplar trees, which give the scene an aspect so foreign that 

 one seeing it might almost imagine himself on the plains of northern 

 Italy looking at the slopes of the Alps, instead of in the Salt Lake 

 Valley looking at the slopes of the Wasatch Mountains. 



The abrupt change from the steep slope of the mountain front to 

 the nearly flat surface of the desert plain, except where deltas and 

 bars were built in the waters of old Lake Bonneville, is ver\^ striking 

 and doubtless will attract the attention of many travelers. The 

 traveler sees no foothills, no indication of a mountain front, until 

 he reaches the foot of the slope. What does the abiTipt change from 

 mountain to plain mean, and has it any connection with the geologic 

 history of the region ? It assuredly has a meaning, and the processes 

 that produced these mountains have had a most striking effect in 

 determining not only the surface features of this region but its 

 climate and its arid conditions. Long ago, as man measures time, 

 the rocks composing the crust of the earth broke along a line that 

 now coincides with the west front of the Wasatch Range, and the 



" In quality of water and in temper- 

 ature Lake Bonneville was as well 

 fitted for abundant and varied life a.s 

 the Bear Lake to-day, and though the 

 only remains yet found in its sedi- 

 ments are fresh-water shells, we need 

 not doubt that its waters teemed with 

 fish. We may confidently picture its 



bordering marshes as fields of ver- 

 dure and its bolder shores as forest 

 clad ; and we may less confidently 

 imagine primitive man as a denizen of 

 its shores and an eyewitness of the 

 spectacular deluge when its earthen 

 barrier was burst," 



