F. V. Hayden on the Lignite deposits of the West. 199 
made last autumn in regard to the lignite deposits of Colorado 
and Dakota territories. The details will be given more fully 
in the final report of the Geological Survey of Nebraska, now 
in progress of preparation. 
_ The discovery that large deposits of “stone coal,” as it is 
often called by travelers, existed in various portions of the west 
is by no means a new one, at the present time. The lignite beds 
of the Upper Missouri were noticed by Lewis and Clark, 1803 
and 1804, those of Laramie Plains by Fremont, 1842, and those 
of the Raton Mt. region by General Emory, as far back as 1848. 
But the intense interest with which they are regarded now, as 
a source of fuel to the vast stretch of fertile but almost treeless 
- plains, has been createdsanéw by the advancing westward wave 
rought about by the construction of those great national high- 
ays. The fact, also, that the coal deposits of Iowa and Mis- 
souri are restricted in area and the coal limited in quantity, 
and in most cases inferior in quality, and that west of these 
states it may be said that there is no true coal at all, renders 
any source of fuel in the far west, a matter of the greatest im- 
portance. In the valley of the Missouri river and the Yellow- 
stone, there are numerous beds of Tertiary lignite, varying from 
a few inches to seven feet in thickness.' These formations have 
