DESCRIPTION OF THE PEAK 665 



nomena are the rock streams. He refers at some length to the descrip- 

 tions of the great landslides at Elm, in the Alps, and at Frank, on the 

 line of the Canadian Pacific Eailway, draws comparisons between them 

 and the San Juan rock streams, and concludes as follows : 



"The striking similarity that the Franli landslide bears to so many of the 

 San Juan rock-streams can leave the origin of these latter deposits open to no 

 doubt. Although it is not impossible that ice may have played an important 

 part in their formation, the writer believes that they are strictly landslides 

 and owe their present form entirely to the nature of their fall and to the 

 character or physical condition of the rocks involved in the fall." 



Description of Veta Peak 



Veta Peak, also called Veta Mountain, lies in Huerfano County, in the 

 southern part of Colorado, about 12 miles northwest of the town of La 

 Veta. To those traveling over the Denver and Eio Grande Eailway 

 from Pueblo into the San Luis Valley via La Veta and the Veta Pass 

 this mountain appears as a very conspicuous, steep-sided cone. The old 

 narrow-gauge line of the Denver and Eio Grande Eailway, now aban- 

 doned, formerly followed up the South Veta Creek to the very base of 

 Veta Peak. The present broad-gauge line keeps farther to the south, 

 but from La Veta up to the pass affords a splendid view of this very 

 conspicuous mountain. The mountain is really not a single conical 

 peak, as it appears to be when seen from the southeast, but a more or less 

 irregular ridge having a general northwesterly trend and divided into 

 two distinct summits by a deeply cut notch. These two summits are 

 called respectively North Veta Peak and South Veta Peak. These peaks 

 consist entirely of igneous rocks in the form of great dikes cutting Car- 

 boniferous rocks. The South Veta Peak, on the west side of which lie 

 tlie rock streams under consideration, is composed of a light gray, re- 

 markably uniform porphyry that is entirely free fi'oni visible pheno- 

 crysts. This rock is of a light gray color and weathers whitish. It has 

 a dull stony luster and breaks into flattish slabs with a slight tendency 

 to conchoidal fractures. It is medium to fine grained, but never flint- 

 like in texture. It has been called a granite felsophyre by E. C. Hills,* 

 and shows a strong tendency to break up into angular fragments under 

 the influence of frost. Although the porphyry mass that forms the 

 mountain rises a thousand feet or more above the sedimentary base, 

 nowhere is the porphyry to be seen forming a solid ledge except where it 

 has been recently exposed by a landslide. The elevation of the mountain 



U. S. Geological Survey, Geologic Atlas, Walsenburg Folio (No. 68), p. 4. 



