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