68 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 



cal evidence is concerned the practical miner would pronounce the 

 quartz range of Green River one of the richest localities for gold and 

 silver in the West. About a year ago a large number of men prospected 

 it with the usual enthusiasm, but most of them returned disappointed. 

 At the present time a few miners are exploring the range near Vermillion 

 Creek with some success. The following lodes have been located near 

 Vermillion Creek, in what is called the Brown's Hole district : 



1. " Lone Star Lode," twenty-five feet wide. Both walls composed 

 of gneiss. Dip 75°, strike north of west, or nearlv northwest and south- 

 east. 2. "Bull of the Woods." South wall well defined. Crevice 

 twelve inches wide on the surface, increasing to three feet as the shaft 

 was sunk twenty feet. 3. " Miner's Glory." Neither wall known. 

 Crevice sis feet wide at present. 4. " Green Oil Lode." South wall 

 well defined, six feet wide. An analysis of some of the ore from one 

 of the lodes showed the existence of 812 in silver, and $1 50 in gold. 

 That there is enough of the precious metals here to attract the miners 

 for a time, there seems to be no doubt ; but my impression is that they 

 will never prove rich enough to reward the expenditure of much labor 

 or capital. Still, only the most superficial examinations have been made 

 up to this time, and the future may show richer developments. 



Although the tertiary beds are so well exposed in the vicinity of this 

 portion of Green River, there are very few indications of coal, and these 

 are quite obscure. On a branch of Red Creek are two or three seams 

 of dark clay or carbonaceous shale, which might lead to thin beds of 

 coal, but no marked signs, as are seen along the railroad at Rock 

 Springs, Point of Rocks, &c. 



October 11. — We left Henry's Fork for Green River Station, on the 

 Union Pacific Railroad. It had been our intention to cross the country 

 on the east side of Green River to the head of Bitter Creek, but the reports 

 of its extreme ruggedness and the lateness of the season prevented us. 

 We concluded that it would be safer to take our teams over a well-trav- 

 eled road, on the west side of Green River, which led us to the old stage 

 road near Bryan. As we ascend the hills on the west side of Green River 

 from our camp on Henry's Fork, we pass over the outcropping edges of 

 the tertiary beds, forming a splendid section. The lower hills, which rise 

 in terraces and are underlaid with dark brown clays, I believe to be of 

 upper cretaceous age, though I was unable to find a single fossil in them. 

 This opinion is strengthened by the fact that the first upheaved ridges 

 south of Henry's Fork, which must lie geologically directly under these 

 clays, is plainly lower cretaceous. The first hard bed above the creta- 

 ceous clays is a rusty yellow sandstone., then comes a series of alternate 

 beds of drab-brown indurated clay, with thin beds of rusty-brown sand- 

 stone ; some of the rocks slightly calcareous, inclining at an angle of 

 60° to 75°, and extending across Green River, with a trend east and 

 west. The sandstones vary in thickness from a few inches to several feet, 

 while the clays vary from a few feet to fifty or one hundred feet in thick- 

 ness. Then come beds of massive sandstones, reddish-gray, with seams 

 of clay between, one hundred and fifty feet thick ; then a light-gray, fine- 

 grained, massive sandstone, weathering by exfoliation — fifty feet ; then 

 a harder bed of iron-rust-yellow sandstone, projecting above the other 

 rocks, with a tendency to a concretionary structure, and weathering into 

 grotesque forms — with cavities one hundred feet 5 then a series of thin 

 beds of yellow drab sandstones, with a reddish layer, with partings of 

 clay. These sandstones, as they stretch across the country, present a 

 marked banded appearance. All these beds incline at various angles 

 at different localities. Here they are nearly vertical, but on the east 



