164 University of Kansas Geological Survey. 
bedding. The upper part of these shales contains numerous clay- 
ironstone concretions which in places are so numerous that they 
form almost a distinct stratum. In the lower part of the cliff frag- 
ments of Gryphaea pitchert and a few other Kiowa species were 
found. In this bluff about 30 feet of the Kiowa shales are exposed. 
A little farther down the creek are coarser layers, in the upper 
Kiowa, of greenish-gray sandstone which contain COyprimeria, 
Gryphaea and quite a large number of small Lamellibranch shells. 
The Dakota sandstone from the junction of the two forks forms a 
conspicuous stratum along the bluffs on the western side of the 
creek for a distance of two miles or more down stream. At the 
latter point the top of the red shales appears along the banks of the 
creek with nearly the full thickness of the Kiowa exposed in the 
slope of the hill to the west. The average of several barometric 
readings gives for these shales a thickness of 180 feet. Above is 
the brownish coarse-grained Dakota sandstone the thickness of 
which at this place was not determined. Professor Cragin de- 
scribed a section which he termed the “upper West Bear creek 
section,’ in which he gave a thickness of 40 feet for the Dakota 
sandstone, evidently measuring it in the bluff along the west side of 
the creek and not in the side cafion where it has its greatest 
thickness. Below the Dakota, Professor Cragin gave 20 to 30 feet 
of grayish clay shales interstratified with yellowish brown sand- 
stone containing numerous clay-ironstone concretions. From the 
lower part of these shales he reported fragments of Gryphaea 
pitchert. Below and forming No. 4 of his section is from 75 to 90 
feet of blue and yellowish gray or brownish shale in which a number 
of species of fossils were reported, as: Gryphaea Pitcheri, G. verst- 
cularis, Trigonia EHmoryt, Ostrea Franklini, Pholadomya Sancta- 
sabae, Cardium Hillanum, C. Kansasense, Idonearca vulgaris, and 
several forms not specifically identified. He also states that the 
base of this section, No. 4, is composed of dark shales in which no 
fossils were found The Big Basin sandstone, or Cheyenne sand- 
stone is well exposed along the western branch of Bear creek. 
The color is frequently mottled bright red and gray, the latter color 
net being as predominant as in the exposures of this sandstone in 
1 Ibid., pp. 77, 78. 
