422 X. H. DARTON STRATIGRAPHY OF THE BLACK HILLS. ETC. 



Feet 



Compact red sandstone in 1-foot layers, veined with calcite 15 



Dark purplish cherty limestones 3 



Red limy sandstone 4 



Very coarse white sandstone lying on granite 80 



The 80-foot bed of coarse loose sandstone in this section is regarded 

 as the same as the basal member in the Platte Canyon section, where the 

 underlying 114 feet of beds of the Perry Park section are thought to be 

 absent. The upper " Red beds " underlying the 81 feet of gypsum at 

 the top give a thickness of 542 feet for the upper Wyoming of Eldridge, 

 which I think is an excessive estimate. The lower limestone in this top 

 series strongly resembles the Minnekahta limestone and has the same 

 stratigraphic relation in lying near the base of the Chugwater formation 

 (upper Wyoming) and being separated from the gray sandstone at the 

 top of the lower Wyoming by red shales, as in the sections north. The 

 heavy gypsum bed at the top of the formation extends for several miles, 

 but varies greatly in thickness. From the limestones near the base of the 

 Perry Park section Mr Willis T. Lee obtained the Mississippian fossils 

 described on a previous page. 



The Red beds are extensivel} T exposed in the Garden of the Gods and 

 adjacent regions about Manitou and Colorado Springs, where they are 

 underlain by Millsap (Mississippian) limestone. The division into upper 

 and lower Wyoming is distinct, the latter having a thickness of a thou- 

 sand feet or more, and the former being not over 90 feet, or very much 

 less than in the region northward. The lower Wyoming beds present 

 their usual features of coarse grained, massive, cross-bedded sandstones, 

 predominately of red color. They give rise to the picturesque features 

 of the Garden of the Gods, shown in plate 33, the "gateway " marking 

 the outcrop of the uppermost hard, red stratum. Next above there are 

 some softer, striped red and gray beds about 100 feet thick, not well ex- 

 posed at the gateway, and then the bed of white sandstone which out- 

 crops so conspicuously in the low but sharp ridge just east. This bed is 

 about 100 feet thick, moderately fine grained, but massive and cross- 

 bedded, and almost surely represents, together with the underlying softer 

 sandstone, the " creamy sandstone " at the top of the lower Wyoming 

 of Eldridge (the Tensleep sandstone of the Wyoming region). In the 

 vicinity of the Garden of the Gods it is similarly succeeded abruptly by 

 soft red shales, with thin limestones near the base and typical g}^psum 

 deposits above, extending to the base of the Morrison shale. I think 

 there can be no question as to the equivalency of this upper series to the 

 upper Wyoming of Eldridge or the Chugwater formation. The follow- 

 ing section of upper Red beds between the gateway of the Garden of the 



