Show west slope arises after about another years the western slope of the began to arise out of the water As the ocean receded it laid down another beach feet thick called the mesa verde formation this book cliff sandstone contains one of the worlds argest coal beds and incidentally the worlds largest track back in those a days 1 when eastern utah and western e rn colorado came out of the ocean for the last time giant dinosaurs played along the shores and swamps the 20 foot igus iguanodon Iguana nadon don walked around on two legs in the peat beds bat that are ar now coal ills his chrt thre e toed tracks were filled with sand and a as time went on the and sand became becam sandstone and the wt peat turned to coal around aroun d 60 years later coal miners took out the coal and left the 34 inch tracks on an the mine belling in reverse showing a stride of 18 feet As the salt waters withdrew the tropical k a conditions began to chill and t the he formation of the rocky mountain chain was in progress it is this particular phenomenon that caused the colorado plateau to be the scenic wonderland that it is today geologists call the part of this chaning changing of the earths crust alo along the colorado utah state line 19 toe uncompahgre uplift up to this time generally speaking the depositions Kosla ons of the colorado plateau had a d remained more or less horizontal one layer had been deposited upon another until it formed a crust several thousand feet thick the uplift was a part of the same convulsions that produced the great mineralized areas in the sil verton ouray telluride area As a result of this action lava flowed easily out over the land now occupied by grand mesa on the northeastern corner of the plateau this three hundred foot thick bed of lava set the course of the colorado and gunnison rivers and they chewed 72 cubic miles out of the tilted strata to form the worlds largest flat top mountain arising one mile above the grand valley grand mesa with its hundreds of trout lakes was built by erosion and oot not by any cataclysmic action |