| Show region of the green river desert MARCUS BY ancia ejones A M there has always been a fascination about this region because it appears to be half completed only as though nature had partially finished it and then went to dreaming pipe dreaming as it were and allowed these dreams to take on reality thus making the desert fantastic weird irrational as though to mock at her own laws it is only in this section that we find the impossible precipices two thousand feet high composed of sandstone and clay beds resting on an insecure foundation of clay and capped at the angles high in the air by towers castles and domes as though they were meant to remain through the ages and yet we know that they can remain but a day geologically speaking the magnificent castle gate is cracked from top to bottom an and d is liable to fall any day it is a L physical impossibility and yet et it stands though trains roar by and jar the ground every day A As 8 we pass out upon the desert from castle gate we find ourselves on a great clay plain all ready for the farmer all ready lor the beautiful prairies which would support millions of cattle and horses and yet the farmer does not till the soil and the prairies are not there it is only clay everywhere with here and there a spear of grass or a stray flower as though nature had but yesterday uncovered the sea bottom and the plants had not yet had time to start the soil is not bad for it supports abundant crops of hay fruit and grain wherever it is i irrigated but there it lies waiting waiting for nature to comp complete completo leio it and stock it and it has waited for ages past As we approach the hills their slopes glisten as though strewn with diamonds carboniferous STRATA containing GYPSUM BEDS GREEN RIVER DESERT UTAH but the are crystals beautiful as diamonds and yet only gypsum in many places there are acres of moss mess agates which nature began as carefully as she ever did but toward the close of her labors seemed to tire and get in a hurry and spoiled them like a beautiful photograph which was well taken and developed but overheated in the drying and so ran 13 together there are along the fremont river rive ij some of the most interesting hills and pre of variegated clays which the triassic sandstones which are full of fishnet like beds of gypsum as shown in the engraving and to all appearances of very recent origin for they are as soft as tertiary clarys and yet belonging to the carboniferous boni ferous age they were left in their t present state before existed or the uinta mountains were formed or the ore deposits of utah were made in fact they were as they are now before utah and nevada most of wyoming and colorado emerged from the sea such are the tricks that nature plays on our theories sometimes nevertheless we are compelled to believe that these soft clay beds only a hundred miles away were formed aha ites and blue lime stones of the wasatch I jow how closely desolation and beauty fertility and barrenness are linked little grand valley and junction are so snugly tucked away between the great red sandstone walls of the triassic in deep and narrow stream fed valleys that they burst vision in the night upon ones view like a i andyes and yet there they are with their fruit trees gr groaning caning under their load of the most delicious peaches apples pears and plumy plums while close at hand are the vineyards loaded with the best of grapes in the spring time the great red strawberries vie with the cliffs cliff s and soil in color and over all tower the lofty desert cottonwoods cotton woods supplying abundant shelter for all from summers heat many such cases snuggle under the cliffs in this region wherever a steam or spring carries the life giving water but it if is in her minerals that this section has played the greatest of freaks though we find a little gold in the henry mountains and some silver in the san rafael swell and a little copper here and there her minerals are wholly anike the rest of utah here veins of coal take the place of veins of silver they stare us in the face from the tops of the cliffs for hundreds of miles as though daring up to mine them and utilize their millions upon millions of tons of fuel farther back there pk TRIASSIC ROCKS surrounding A cultivated AREA IN THE GREEN RIVER DESERT UTAH are in the hills great vertical veins filled not with copper but with gilsonite wurt zel lite mineral wax and others which are not metallic but of the hydrocarbon series from which are made varnish marafine pa and many other useful things such as insulators they may well be classed among the unstable minerals for if they lie exposed to the elements long they decompose and are useless but of all the chemical freaks the la produce the most unique this group of peaks may be likened to the main tent of a huge circus the canvas being the ground and the projecting peaks the tent poles tips the eruptive cores formed deep down in the strata of the earth under the sea that then covered the region gradually lifted the whole area into a great dome and bending the strata with it but the cores did not quite thrust their way through the whole as they lifted the mass in after years the uppermost strata were worn away so as to expose the cores wholly or in part and these now form the la geologically these are the youngest of all our mountains except a few volcanic peaks upon their flanks and undoubtedly formed by the uplifting forces of the mountains are many fissures going deep into the uplifted mass which are filled with that strange mineral called uranium and its attendant so called elements of radium etc uranium has undoubtedly been formed at nearly all the stages of the earths life since the surface face became solid but it has disappeared from all but the youngest it can hardly be said to have evaporated for that means change of form but not of substance for uranium radium and helium have with little littie doubt changed their so called unchangeable atomic character and actually become other elements radium is known to have changed into helium and this into some other more stable element but here in the la we catch these elements as it were on the wing and by them we are carried into a chemical world as new and strange as heaven will be from earth we actually come in sight of the reality of what the al chemists only dreamed the of the metals and the momentous changes the realization of which may make in the whole history of the human race astronomy has long taught that the elements in the most gaseous stars are few and they become more in number as the stars are cooler or less gaseous in other words elements themselves are formed either by decreasing temperatures pera tures or by condensation in addition to new chemical combinations in the matter of new combinations we know that water was impossible on the earth till after its surface cooled to below degrees fahrenheit in the matter of new elements the spectroscope reveals this but space would fail us to discuss the endless problems and new laws which radium reveals to us it is enough to know that strongest desert can furnish the strangest mineral the world ever saw few people know that on the northern flank of the la where the grand river cuts its way through there are some of the finest canyons to be found in the world if travelers on the rio grande knew that such things existed within a few miles of the road they would stop off and see them one of the finest of these canyons almost an exact counterpart of that of the Cool rado but on a smaller scale is found a few miles southeast of cisco there the great red walls of the triassic sandstones rise perpendicularly five hundred feet and are cut into innumerable recesses towers and domes these rest on a floor of dark rock which in one place is blue limestone in another quartzite and in another granite or schist this floor forms a narrow mesa perhaps a hundred yards wide on each side between the red walls and the black gorge in the center this gorge rises perpendicularly from two to five hundred feet from the water in such a way that it is seldom that the sunshine ever reaches the foaming water below these canyons sweep in endless curves in one place the water is as placid as a mirror in another it is rippled by many a sparkling wavelet and in another it goes tumbling in white spray over great rocks and with deafening roar some distance above westwater where the schist comes to the surface the river flows through as beautiful a series of dalles as the columbia itself though the surrounding scenery is not so fin fine e the water threads its way through a labyrinth flowing as silently as night and in a channel so narrow that it seems impossible for it to carry the vast amount of water which w we e know is there it must be a fine place for fish there is no better place for the artist who desires beautiful photographic gems below green river there is another magnificent series of canyons on that large stream made famous by powells trip down the colorado many attempts have been made to start an excursion line through this region one would suppose that a gasoline launch of good power would afford much revenue to the railroad if properly advertised by taking passengers down to the junction with the grand and back or up to moab there is no river in this country which can afford much such unique varied and grand scenery in a similar distance the massive walls below moab rival the grand canyon of the colorado itself tha th water is during most of the year clear and sparkling there is unlimited fishing and the fish are large there are places in the green river where gas bubbles continuously and there are oil springs near by there are coalfields coal fields and deposits of gypsum manganese etc to the tourist passing over the desert near cisco and thompsons Thomp sons spring the rain sculpturing on the hills surpasses anything he will ever see elsewhere it is made a special subject of illustration by prof davis in his geology because of its peculiar interest this desert alone furnishes one of the best subjects for study in geology that can be found in no other place can the student find an open page two thousand feet thick and three hundred miles long revealing the geological history of the cretaceous age from top to bottom but here it is and can be studied from the train with a field glass |
