Blue Creek Canyon
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Blue Creek Canyon
Blue Creek Canyon is a narrow, steep-walled canyon in Gunnison County, Colorado. It lies between Fitzpatrick Mesa and Blue Mesa and is south of Morrow Point Reservoir and southeast of Cimarron, Colorado. U.S. Highway 50 goes through the canyon. Gunnison County Road 867 (also called Alpine Plateau Road and Forest Service Road 867) intersects with Highway 50 near the middle of the canyon. Upcoming highway construction The highway through the canyon is narrow and winding. Because of this, many accidents have occurred there. The U.S. Department of Transportation and various other agencies are making safety improvements to the 3.8 mile section of the highway in Blue Creek Canyon (which U.S. DOT websites refer to as Little Blue Creek Canyon). The work began in April 2021 and will last through fall 2023. The construction — which involves widening the highway, widening and paving the shoulders, replacing guardrail, and adding new signage and striping — is requiring frequent and long- ...
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Gunnison County, Colorado
Gunnison County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 16,918. The county seat is Gunnison. The county was named for John W. Gunnison, a United States Army officer and captain in the Army Topographical Engineers, who surveyed for the transcontinental railroad in 1853. History Archeological studies have dated the Ute people's appearance in the Uncompahgre region of Colorado as early as 1150 A.D. Possibilities exist that they are descendants of an earlier people living in the area as far back as 1500 B.C. They were a nomadic people moving about the Western Slope of Colorado in the various parts of the year. In the early to mid-1600s the Spaniards of New Mexico introduced the horse which changed their patterns of hunting taking them across the divide to the eastern slopes and into conflict with the Plains Indians which soon became their bitter enemies. The first recorded expedition of Western Colorado wilderness was led by ...
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Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, eighth most extensive and List of U.S. states and territories by population, 21st most populous U.S. state. The 2020 United States Census, 2020 United States census enumerated the population of Colorado at 5,773,714, an increase of 14.80% since the 2010 United States Census, 2010 United States census. The region has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native Americans and their Paleo-Indians, ancestors for at least 13,500 years and possibly much longer. The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route for early peoples who spread throughout the Americas. "''Colorado''" is the Spanish adjective meaning "ruddy", th ...
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Blue Creek (Gunnison River Tributary)
Blue Creek is a tributary of the Gunnison River in Gunnison County, Colorado. It forms at the confluence of Little Blue Creek and Big Blue Creek adjacent to the intersection of U.S. Highway 50 and Alpine Plateau Road (Gunnison County Road 867) in Blue Creek Canyon. Course After it starts at the confluence of little Blue Creek and Big Blue Creek, Blue Creek flows under a bridge on Highway 50, it then flows north along the highway's west side, and then separates from the highway heading north until it eventually empties into Morrow Point Reservoir at the Curecanti Needle. The creek is long. Other Blue Creek is one of the two primary stream inflows to Morrow Point Reservoir (the other one is Curecanti Creek). Its mouth lies within the Curecanti National Recreation Area. The portion of the stream within the recreation area has good fly fishing and provides the best chance of catching fish, but access here is only by boat. See also *List of rivers of Colorado This is a list of s ...
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Morrow Point Reservoir
Morrow Point Reservoir is an artificial reservoir on the Gunnison River in western Colorado. Located in the upper Black Canyon of the Gunnison, the lake was created in 1968 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of a larger plan to impound the upper section of the Gunnison and create opportunities for hydroelectric power generation, water conservation, and recreation. Morrow Point Reservoir is managed by the National Park Service as a unit within the Curecanti National Recreation Area, and is the location of the Curecanti Needle, a striking 700 ft. granite spire on the reservoir's southern bank whose unique shape was for decades a recognized symbol of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Background Morrow Point Reservoir is part of the Wayne N. Aspinall Unit of the Colorado River Storage Project, a Bureau of Reclamation project that retains the waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries, such as the Gunnison, for agricultural and municipal use. The seco ...
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Cimarron, Colorado
Cimarron is an unincorporated rural hamlet in Montrose County, Colorado, United States. It is located on the northern side of U.S. Highway 50, 19 miles from the town of Montrose to its west, and 42 miles from Gunnison, Colorado Gunnison to its east. There is a store with fuel pumps and a post office at Cimarron. The post office services the rural ZIP Code 81220 area. Cimarron is located along the Cimarron River, just south of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and just outside Curecanti National Recreation Area. The D & RG Narrow Gauge Trestle crosses the Cimarron River gorge just northeast of town, and is on the National Register of Historic Places (#76000172). Geography Cimarron is located at (38.441758,-107.555981). See also *Outline of Colorado **Index of Colorado-related articles *State of Colorado **Colorado cities and towns **Colorado counties *** Montrose County, Colorado **Colorado metropolitan areas *** Montrose, CO Micropolitan Statistical Area *Black Can ...
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United States Department Of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT or DOT) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is headed by the secretary of transportation, who reports directly to the President of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet. The department's mission is "to develop and coordinate policies that will provide an efficient and economical national transportation system, with due regard for need, the environment, and the national defense." History Prior to the creation of the Department of Transportation, its functions were administered by the under secretary of commerce for transportation. In 1965, Najeeb Halaby, administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency (predecessor to the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA), suggested to President Lyndon B. Johnson that transportation be elevated to a cabinet-level post, and that the FAA be folded into the DOT. It was established by Congress in the Department of Transportatio ...
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Curecanti Needle
The Curecanti Needle is a 700-ft granite spire located on the Gunnison River in western Colorado. A notable landmark to generations of natives and pioneers, the Needle is located on the southern bank of Morrow Point Reservoir, an impoundment of the Gunnison river between Gunnison and Montrose, Colorado. Used for many years as an advertising symbol for the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, whose narrow-gauge railway famously ran along the northern bank of the river and passed near the Needle, the spire is today part of the Curecanti National Recreation Area, a National Park Service facility that encompasses three impoundments of the Gunnison river, including Morrow Point Reservoir. Location The Needle is located in the upper reaches of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, along a portion of the Gunnison river impounded in 1965. On the south bank of the reservoir, the spire is immediately west of the mouth of Blue Creek and directly across the river from the mouth of Cure ...
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Pegmatite
A pegmatite is an igneous rock showing a very coarse texture, with large interlocking crystals usually greater in size than and sometimes greater than . Most pegmatites are composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica, having a similar silicic composition to granite. However, rarer intermediate composition and mafic pegmatites are known. Many of the world's largest crystals are found within pegmatites. These include crystals of microcline, quartz, mica, spodumene, beryl, and tourmaline. Some individual crystals are over long. Most pegmatites are thought to form from the last fluid fraction of a large crystallizing magma body. This residual fluid is highly enriched in volatiles and trace elements, and its very low viscosity allows molecules to migrate rapidly to join an existing crystal rather than coming together to form new crystals. This allows a few very large crystals to form. While most pegmatites have a simple composition of minerals common in ordinary igneous roc ...
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Dike (geology)
A dike or dyke, in geological usage, is a sheet of rock that is formed in a fracture of a pre-existing rock body. Dikes can be either magmatic or sedimentary in origin. Magmatic dikes form when magma flows into a crack then solidifies as a sheet intrusion, either cutting across layers of rock or through a contiguous mass of rock. Clastic dikes are formed when sediment fills a pre-existing crack.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak Magmatic dikes A magmatic dike is a sheet of igneous rock that cuts across older rock beds. It is formed when magma fills a fracture in the older beds and then cools and solidifies. The dike rock is usually more resistant to weathering than the surrounding rock, so that erosion exposes the dike as a natural wall or ridge. It is from these natural walls that dikes get their name. Dikes preserve a record of the fissures through which most mafic magma (fluid magma low in silica) reaches the surface. They are studied by geologists for the clues ...
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Feldspar
Feldspars are a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the ''plagioclase'' (sodium-calcium) feldspars and the ''alkali'' (potassium-sodium) feldspars. Feldspars make up about 60% of the Earth's crust, and 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight. Feldspars crystalize from magma as both intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks and are also present in many types of metamorphic rock. Rock formed almost entirely of calcic plagioclase feldspar is known as anorthosite. Feldspars are also found in many types of sedimentary rocks. Compositions The feldspar group of minerals consists of tectosilicates, silicate minerals in which silicon ions are linked by shared oxygen ions to form a three-dimensional network. Compositions of major elements in common feldspars can be expressed in terms of three endmembers: * potassium feldspar (K- ...
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Canyons And Gorges Of Colorado
A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cut through underlying surfaces, eventually wearing away rock layers as sediments are removed downstream. A river bed will gradually reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water into which the river drains. The processes of weathering and erosion will form canyons when the river's headwaters and estuary are at significantly different elevations, particularly through regions where softer rock layers are intermingled with harder layers more resistant to weathering. A canyon may also refer to a rift between two mountain peaks, such as those in ranges including the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the Himalayas or the Andes. Usually, a river or stream carves out such splits between mountains. Examples of mountain-type ...
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Landforms Of Gunnison County, Colorado
A landform is a natural or anthropogenic land feature on the solid surface of the Earth or other planetary body. Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. Landforms include hills, mountains, canyons, and valleys, as well as shoreline features such as bays, peninsulas, and seas, including submerged features such as mid-ocean ridges, volcanoes, and the great ocean basins. Physical characteristics Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as elevation, slope, orientation, stratification, rock exposure and soil type. Gross physical features or landforms include intuitive elements such as berms, mounds, hills, ridges, cliffs, valleys, rivers, peninsulas, volcanoes, and numerous other structural and size-scaled (e.g. ponds vs. lakes, hills vs. mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although ...
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