GEOLQGICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES. 157 



that wrenched them from their parent beds, smoothed them into their 

 present rounded form, and then aggregated and cemented them together 

 into such huge masses as we find here % 



From the mouth of Echo up the valley the rocks seem to form a sort 

 of gentle anticlinal for about ten miles, and then the inclination is 

 reversed. The general dip, however, is 5° to 15° nearly northwest ; 

 but for six miles below and three miles above Hanging Eock, it is 

 increased to 25°, and even to 35°. 



This formation, which differs somewhat lithologically from any with 

 which I am acquainted, must have an aggregate thickness of at least 

 three thousand feet. The conglomerate portion must be at least fifteen 

 hundred feet in thickness. It includes no beds of coal, and shows a few 

 fossils, which are all impressions of deciduous, trees, bnt no marine or 

 fresh- water shells. 



Near Coalville, a little town in the valley of Weber Eiver, five miles 

 above the mouth of Echo Creek, coal outcrops several times. At Spriggs' 

 Opening the dip is 20° or 30° east, and the coal bed about fifteen feet 

 thick, capped with gray sandstone, much of it charged with pebbles. 

 I was informed that in other places this pebbly sandstone rests directly 

 on the coal bed. A few hundred feet from Spriggs' Opening a shaft to 

 strike the same bed has been sunk seventy-nine feet deep, through 

 twelve feet of gravel and sand, into black clay, growing harder down- 

 ward, and containing numerous specimens of a species of Inoceramus, 

 Ostrea, and Ammonites, showing that the black clays are certainly of 

 cretaceous age. If these beds do actually lie above the coal, as the dip 

 would indicate, then this formation of doubtful age, must be cretaceous, 

 and some of the finest coal beds in the West are in rocks of that age. It 

 is probable, however, that the coal is really above the black cretaceous 

 clays of JSTo. 2, and forms a part of the upper cretaceous group. 



The Weber Eiver flows directly west, and the rocks incline in a sort 

 of half circle between north and south. Several beds of massive sand- 

 stone cap the high hills, and between them are layers of clay with a 

 reddish tinge. I was informed that there were in this section six or 

 seven beds of coal, varying in thickness from eighteen inches to fifteen 

 feet. 



Passing down the Weber Valley the dip would carry down the Coal- 

 ville coal beds, in a distance of five miles, that is, at Echo City, to a 

 depth of from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet beneath the sur- 

 face. So that the coal area that can ever be made available for eco- 

 nomical purposes in this region must be very limited. 



An interesting feature along the Weber Eiver is its terraces. Near 

 Echo City there is a rather narrow bottom near the river; then an 

 abrupt ascent of thirty feet ; then a level plain or bottom of two hun- 

 * dred to four hundred yards ; then a gentle ascent to the rock bluffs. 

 The summit of the first bluff at Echo is five hundred feet high; it then 

 slopes back to the plains beyond. 



Passing down the Weber Valley, about a mile below Echo Station 

 the beds begin to dip 25° northeast. The whole valley is filled with 

 rounded boulders, some of them three to four feet in diameter. The 

 Weber Eiver throughout the greater part of its course seems to flow 

 through a monoclinal valley ; but just before reaching the entrance of 

 Lost Creek it seems to pass along a local synclinal valley. A long ridge 

 of conglomerate extends down from the direction of the Wasatch 

 Mountains, nearly northeast and southwest, inclining northeast 5° to 

 10°. At this point the Weber, instead of continuing in the syn- 

 clinal valley, cuts through the ridge, isolating a portion about half a 



