78 University of Kansas Geological Survey. 
These deposits form the basis of the uplands in which the Medicine 
Lodge, in the vicinity of Lake City, . . . have eroded its bed 
to the depth of at least 150 feet. They also extend westward as far 
at least as Crooked creek, appearing lower and lower in the valley | 
slopes until they pass beneath their beds as the declivity rises in 
that direction. East and south they compose the surface rocks in 
Garber and a large part of Harper county. The formation doubtless 
attains a thickness of 200 to 300 feet at least in this region, and 
its erosion by the numerous water-courses in the counties named 
has produced some of the most picturesque scenic effects to be found 
in the State.”! Professor St. John was not successful in finding any 
fossils in the formation, which has been the experience of all sub- 
sequent investigators. 
In 1889 Professor Hay, who has since so fully described the 
general appearance of the Red-Beds of southern Kansas, in a 
lecture before the Kansas Academy of Science, dwelt upon the ex- 
tent of the area of the Red-Beds, which he described as thinning 
to the north, while the Dakota thins to the south. In reference to 
the age Professor Hay stated “These Red-Beds we call Triassic, but 
possibly the upper part may be Jurassic. As yet they have yielded 
no determined fossils in Kansas2.” 7 
The same year, Professor Cragin changed his correlation of the 
Red-Beds from the Cretaceous to the Triassic. In his explanation 
of this change he “called attention to the similarity of the red beds 
of the Gypsum Hills to those of New Mexico, and deprecated the 
prevalent fashion of ignoring the claims, by earlier writers, that 
the Triassic existed in Kansas, since no evidence from fossils dis- 
puted such claims, and lithological evidence seemed to favor them. 
But later, in the article cited, he embraced the error, then current, 
of referring the red sandstones of southern Kansas to the Creta- 
ceous. . . . The evidence of the Trias in Kansas, though based 
on lithological resemblances and assumed continuity of the Trias 
of New Mexico, etc., with occurrences in southern Kansas, is now 
generally regarded as all but conclusive. Yet the distinctly Permian 
affinities of the fossils from the lower red-beds of northern Texas 
1 Fifth Biennial Report Kansas State Board Agriculture, pt. II., pp. 140, 141. 
2 Robert Hay, Transactions Kansas Academy of Science, vol. XI., p. 36. 
