Introduction

Gold was discovered in the bed of the South Platte River in 1858. Prospectors flocked to Colorado as they had flocked only a few years before to California. They worked the sands and gravels of Cherry Creek, Clear Creek, Boulder Creek, and California Gulch. Exhausting the placer sands of the stream bottoms, they moved higher to mine gold-bearing veins at Central City and Blackhawk. Mining camps sprang into existence overnight, each heralding some new “strike,” each populated by a new rush of fortune seekers. As lower areas were mined out, prospectors moved yet higher—to Breckenridge, Gold Hill, and Empire, Aspen, Leadville, and Cripple Creek. Silver was found as well as gold, then iron, and later tungsten and molybdenum. The metallic ring of mining tools echoed from Colorado’s peaks. Fortunes were made here. Legends were born.

Prospectors and miners were not, however, the first people interested in the rocks of Colorado. Earlier, bands of nomadic Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians had searched Colorado’s hills for flint for arrowheads and brightly colored clays for warpaint. Cliff-dwelling Pueblo Indians in southwestern Colorado sought clay for their pottery and fossil seashells for the magic of their medicine men. And from farther to the southwest, Navajo tribesmen came to Colorado for turquoise.

From clay to gold, much of Colorado’s wealth has come from her mountains. But after the rush to the mines, as veins were mined out and placers worked over, as values and prices changed, her population sought the riches of the prairies: fertile lands for agriculture, and in the rock layers below, black gold—vast accumulations of oil and natural gas. The tablelands and plateaus west of the mountains yield their wealth, too. Here are valley farms, fed often by irrigation water, and ranch country. Here is more oil, and in some areas precious metals and uranium.

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In recent years Colorado’s prairies, peaks, and plateaus have brought new meaning to all America: the state now provides an attractive playground for state residents and their visitors. Campgrounds, streams, lakes, and high trails beckon in summer; barren slopes deep in winter snow attract the skier. More and more, those who live in Colorado and those who visit her seek to understand these mountains and hills and prairies, to learn of her geologic origins and her far distant past. For tourist and resident, casual visitor, ski enthusiast, Sunday picnicker, for all those who have met Colorado and enjoyed her, this book is written.

Topographically, scenically, and geologically, Colorado can be divided into the three provinces shown here.

PLATEAUS

UINTA MTS.

GREEN RIVER BASIN

Yampa River

Steamboat Springs

UINTA BASIN

White River

WHITE RIVER PLATEAU

ROAN PLATEAU

Glenwood Springs

Colorado River

Grand Junction

GRAND MESA

Gunnison River

UNCOMPAHGRE PLATEAU

Dolores River

PARADOX BASIN

MESA VERDE

MOUNTAINS

NORTH PARK

RABIT EARS RANGE

PARK RANGE

MIDDLE PARK

GORE RANGE

FRONT RANGE

ELK MTS.

Aspen

SAWATCH RANGE

Leadville

MOSQUITO RANGE

Fairplay

SOUTH PARK

WEST ELK MTS.

Gunnison

Salida

WET MTS.

SANGRE DE CRISTO RANGE

SAN LUIS VALLEY

Rio Grande

Alamosa

SAN JUAN MTS.

Ouray

Silverton

Durango

MESA DE MAYA

PLAINS

Fort Collins

South Platte River

Denver

GREAT PLAINS

Colorado Springs

Arkansas River

WET MT. VALLEY

HUERFANO PARK

La Junta

Walsenburg

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