Geology Underfoot Along Colorado's Front Range

by Lon Abbot, Terri Cook

Overview

The transition from the relatively flat Great Plains to the craggy peaks of Colorado’s Front Range is one of North America’s most abrupt topographical contrasts. The epic, 1,800-million-year geologic story behind this amazing landscape is even more awe inspiring. In Geology Underfoot along Colorado’s Front Range, the most recent addition to the Geology Underfoot series, authors (and geoscientists) Lon Abbott and Terri Cook narrate the Front Range’s tale, from its humble beginnings as a flat, nondescript seafloor through several ghostly incarnations as a towering mountain range. The book’s 21 chapters, or vignettes, lead you to easily accessible stops along the Front Range’s highways and byways, where you’ll meet the apatosaur and other dinosaurs who roamed the floodplains and beaches that once covered the Front Range; look for diamonds in rare, out-of-the-way volcanic pipes; learn how America’s mountain, Pikes Peak, developed from molten magma miles below the surface only to become an important visual landmark for early Great Plains’ travelers; and walk the Gangplank, a singularly important plateau for both nineteenth-century westward expansion and our understanding of the Front Range’s most recent exhumation. A healthy dose of full-color illustrations and photos demystify the concepts put forth in the authors’ elegant, insightful prose. With Geology Underfoot along Colorado’s Front Range in hand, you’ll feel like you’re traveling through time as you explore the Front Range’s hidden geologic treasures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780878425952
Publisher:	Mountain Press
Publication date:	09/10/2012
Series:	Geology Underfoot Series
Pages:	338
Sales rank:	642,918
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 8.84(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Lon Abbott is a geology faculty member at the University of Colorado at Boulder whose recent research has focused on the cutting of the Grand Canyon and the formation of the Colorado Rockies. He received a bachelor’s degree in geology and geophysics from the University of Utah and a PhD in earth science from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Terri Cook is a freelance science writer and member of the National Association of Science Writers. She earned a master’s degree in geology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Lon and Terri are coauthors of Geology Underfoot in Northern Arizona (Mountain Press) and Hiking the Grand Canyon’s Geology.

Table of Contents

Preface vi

Geology of Colorado's Front Range 1

1 Colorado Diamonds-It's No Hoax!: Diamond Pipes along the Front Range 11

2 Walking the Gangplank: Soapstone Prairie Natural Area 25

3 Nature's Master Sculptor: Trail Ridge Road 39

4 Catastrophe in the Canyon: The Devastating Big Thompson Flood 57

5 Déjà Vu All Over Again: Mountains Come, Mountains Go at Eldorado Canyon State Park 67

6 From Pediments to Plutonium: The History of Rocky Flats 79

7 Where Colorado Began: The Colorado Mineral Belt at Idaho Springs 93

8 Raising, Razing, and Rebirthing the Rockies: Tracing the Mountains' Ups and Downs around Golden 111

9 The Whole Shebang: Red Rocks to Golden: 1,700 Million Years of Front Range History 127

10 Denver's Dinosaur Freeway: Dinosaur Ridge 147

11 A Legacy of Fire and Flood: The Wall Mountain Tuff and the Castle Rock Conglomerate 161

12 An Extraordinary Fossil Ecosystem: Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument 171

13 Colorado's Mountain of Gold: Cripple Creek 185

14 Purple Mountain Majesty: Pikes Peak, America's Mountain 199

15 Spelunking in an Ancient Sea: Cave of the Winds 213

16 Building a Garden Fit for the Gods: Faulting and Fins at Garden of the Gods and Nearby Parks 227

17 Hallmarks of a Hothouse World: Paint Mines Interpretive Park 243

18 A Wound in the Skin of the Earth: The Royal Gorge 255

19 Jurassic Park: Dinosaurs of the Cañon City Area 265

20 Legendary Dikes: The Spanish Peaks 277

21 The Day the Dinosaurs Died: The Infamous K-T Boundary at Trinidad Lake State Park 293

Glossary 305

Sources of More Information 318

Index 327