The transition from the relatively flat Great Plains to the craggy peaks of Colorado’s Front Range is one of North America’s most abrupt topographical contrasts. The epic, 1,800-million-year geologic story behind this amazing landscape is even more awe inspiring. In
Geology Underfoot along Colorado’s Front Range
, the most recent addition to the Geology Underfoot series, authors (and geoscientists) Lon Abbott and Terri Cook narrate the Front Range’s tale, from its humble beginnings as a flat, nondescript seafloor through several ghostly incarnations as a towering mountain range. The book’s 21 chapters, or vignettes, lead you to easily accessible stops along the Front Range’s highways and byways, where you’ll meet the apatosaur and other dinosaurs who roamed the floodplains and beaches that once covered the Front Range; look for diamonds in rare, out-of-the-way volcanic pipes; learn how America’s mountain, Pikes Peak, developed from molten magma miles below the surface only to become an important visual landmark for early Great Plains’ travelers; and walk the Gangplank, a singularly important plateau for both nineteenth-century westward expansion and our understanding of the Front Range’s most recent exhumation. A healthy dose of full-color illustrations and photos demystify the concepts put forth in the authors’ elegant, insightful prose. With
in hand, you’ll feel like you’re traveling through time as you explore the Front Range’s hidden geologic treasures.