Guidebook of the Western United States: Part C. The Santa Fe Route with a side trip to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado

Darton, Nelson

In going from Kansas City to Los Angeles, a distance of nearly 1,800 miles, by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway the traveler sees a wide diversity of geographic and industrial conditions. First he crosses the Great Plains, which extend for 500 miles, to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. In the eastern part of these plains the rainfall is ample for crops, so that nearly all the land is in farms and the population is moderately dense. Toward the west the climate becomes increasingly arid and farms give place to scattered cattle ranches, except along some of the watercourses where irrigation is practicable. Running streams and groves of trees are numerous in the eastern part, but the watercourses in the western part are much smaller and many of them are dry in summer, and the principal trees are cottonwoods, which grow along some of the valleys. The Rocky Mountain province is skirted by the railway from Trinidad, Colo., to Las Vegas, N. Mex., and is finally passed between Las Vegas and Lamy. It consists of a succession of high rocky ridges rising abruptly 4,000 to 6,000 feet above the Great Plains. On account of their great altitude these mountains receive considerable precipitation and in large part are forested up to timber line, which is at an elevation of about 11,000 feet. The rocks are steeply tilted, and in most of the area the granites and schists of the old earth crust have been pushed far upward and constitute the high central ranges. Over the higher parts of the uplift the sandstones and limestones under which the granites and schists were originally buried have been largely removed by the elements. Between Las Vegas and Lamy the railway crosses the north end of the great Corona Plateau, a high table-land between the Pecos and the Rio Grande which lies south of the Rocky Mountains and is related to the plateau province west of the Rio Grande. Beyond the Rocky Mountains the traveler crosses the Rio Grande and enters the great Colorado Plateau province, which extends westward across New Mexico and far into Arizona, and many miles to the north and south. In this province sedimentary rocks predominate, in large part lying nearly horizontal, so that the harder layers constitute extensive plateaus. It contains also many great lava flows, some of which form the surface of the plateaus. Most of this province is more arid than the western part of the Great Plains. Toward the west, however, about Flagstaff, Ariz., and the Grand Canyon, where the altitude increases to 7,000 feet or more, the precipitation is much greater and luxuriant pine forests cover a wide area.

Guidebook of the Western United States: Part C. The Santa Fe Route with a side trip to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado

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