WAHSATOH EANGE. 341 



the intricacies of its rocky structure, and cut through, at short intervals, to 

 its very base by deep canon-gashes, is one of rare grandeur and beauty. 

 Though, from a distance, the mountains appear almost bare of forests, like 

 most of the western ranges, they are well covered in their upper portion, 

 where the character of the surface admits of it, with an open growth of pine 

 and quaking-asp, while the lower spurs, especially toward Salt Lake Valley, 

 often support a dense growth of a dwarf or scrub oak, which here attains 

 an unusual altitude for trees of the oak family. Along the streams, where 

 there is any alluvial accumulation, are willows a:nd alders, and frequently 

 cottonwoods. A striking feature is presented in the old lake-terraces which 

 mark the former beach-line of the ancient Lake Bonneville, of which the 

 uppermost is about 940 feet above the level of the present lake, and can be 

 traced with but few interruptions from one end of the range to the other, 

 often forming an almost level shoulder to the spurs, from 50 to 100 feet in 

 width. 



In its geological structure, the Wahsatch Range presents a type of 

 extreme complication, contrasting strongly with the simplicity and regu- 

 larity of its nearest neighbor, the Uinta Range. The simplest expression 

 of this structure would be that of a sharp north and south anticlinal fold 

 over pre-existing ridges of granite and unconformable Archaean beds, whose 

 axis has been so bent and contorted by longitudinal compression that it at 

 times assumes a direction approximately east and west. In connection 

 with the folding has been developed a widely-spread system of faulting 

 and dislocation, in a direction ge-nerally parallel with the main line of ele- 

 vation, which has cut ojff and thrown down the western members of the 

 longitudinal folds, and the western ends of the transverse folds, which are 

 now buried beneath the valley-plains, while the detailed structure has been 

 still further complicated by a system of transverse faulting, and, in the 

 northern region, by the development of a second broad anticlinal fold to 

 the east of the main line of elevation. 



Like most of the great mountain-ranges of the Cordilleran system, it 

 occupies the line of a former Archgean uplift, round which were deposited 

 a thickness of from 30,000 to 40,000 feet of practically conformable beds, 

 extending in age from the Cambrian to the Jurassic formation inclusive. 



