The Medicine Bow Mountains are a

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

in the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

that extend from northern

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the 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 t ...

into southern

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

. The northern extent of this range is the sub-range the Snowy Range. From the northern end of Colorado's

Never Summer Mountains The Never Summer Mountains are a mountain range in the Rocky Mountains in north central Colorado in the United States consisting of seventeen named peaks. The range is located along the northwest border of Rocky Mountain National Park, forming t ...

, the Medicine Bow mountains extend north from Cameron Pass along the border between Larimer and

Jackson Jackson may refer to: People and fictional characters * Jackson (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the surname or given name Places Australia * Jackson, Queensland, a town in the Maranoa Region * Jackson North, Qu ...

counties in Colorado and northward into south central Wyoming. In Wyoming, the range sits west of Laramie, in Albany and

Carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent In chemistry, the valence (US spelling) or valency (British spelling) of an element is the measure of its combining capacity with o ...

counties to the route of the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

and U.S.

Interstate 80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one o ...

. The mountains often serve as a symbol for the city of Laramie. The range is home to Snowy Range Ski Area. The highest peak in the range is Clark Peak (), located in the Rawah Wilderness along the southern end of the range in Northern

. Much of the range is located within the

Medicine Bow National Forest Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, and Health promotion ...

in Wyoming. The highest peak on the Wyoming side is

Medicine Bow Peak Medicine Bow Peak () is the highest peak in the Snowy Range, a part of the Medicine Bow Mountains, about west of Laramie, Wyoming. It lies within Medicine Bow National Forest and is the highest point in southern Wyoming. The summit lies in ...

(). The range is drained along the western flank by the

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

and

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

rivers, tributaries of the

North Platte North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...

in North Park. On its eastern flank it is drained by the

Laramie River The Laramie River is a tributary of the North Platte River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 21, 2011 in the U.S. states of Colorado and Wyoming. ...

, another tributary of the North Platte.

Geology

The Medicine Bow Mountains resulted from continental compression during the

Laramide Orogeny The Laramide orogeny was a time period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago. The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the o ...

. Beginning about 70 million years ago, the Rockies began uplifting along

thrust fault A thrust fault is a break in the Earth's crust, across which older rocks are pushed above younger rocks. Thrust geometry and nomenclature Reverse faults A thrust fault is a type of reverse fault that has a dip of 45 degrees or less. If ...

s that broke up the

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the ...

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

Earth's crust Earth's crust is Earth's thin outer shell of rock, referring to less than 1% of Earth's radius and volume. It is the top component of the lithosphere, a division of Earth's layers that includes the crust and the upper part of the mantle. The ...

. By 50 million years ago, all of Wyoming's major mountain ranges were elevated and the major basins defined. Rocks exposed along the flanks and peaks of the Medicine Bow Mountains span the Precambrian to modern, with the peaks composed of 2.4-2.0 billion year old Medicine Peak Quartzite. This rock was once a shallow marine sand deposit that has since been compressed and heated during burial, forming the

metamorphic rock Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock (protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, causin ...

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tect ...

. What may be traces of multicellular animals are preserved in this rock, making it of particular interest to

paleontologists Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

. The

Cheyenne belt The Cheyenne Belt is the plate tectonics, tectonic suture zone between the Archean-age Wyoming craton to the north and the Paleoproterozoic-age Yavapai province to the south. It runs through the southeastern quadrant of the state of Wyoming, United ...

, the 1.78–1.74 billion year old suture between the

Wyoming craton The Wyoming Craton is a craton in the west-central United States and western Canada – more specifically, in Montana, Wyoming, southern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, and parts of northern Utah. Also called the Wyoming Province, it is the init ...

and the Yavapai province that formed as North America was assembled, is exposed in the Medicine Bow Mountains.

Fauna

Wildlife abounds in these mountains, with mule deer, elk, moose, black bear, mountain lions, coyotes, marmots, pika, Richardson's ground squirrels, bobcats, and lynx as well as a tremendous variety of birds. Brook and rainbow trout as well as grayling and golden trout are found in the streams. A disjunct population of arctic fairy shrimp (Brachinecta paludosa) has been documented in a few lakes in the northern part of the range.

Research

Since 1987, the Glacier Lakes area of the Snowy Range has been home to the Glacier Lakes Ecosystem Experiments Site (GLEES), a field unit of the

Rocky Mountain Research Station The Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) is one of five regional units that make up the US Forest Service Research and Development organization — the most extensive natural resources research organization in the world. The station headquarters ...

United States Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service manages of land. Major divisions of the agency inc ...

. Areas of scientific inquiry at the site include atmospheric pollutant deposition, forest carbon and water vapor cycling, effect of insect outbreaks, and alpine lake and stream hydrology. The site is in extent and hosts facilities for the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), the National Dry Deposition Network (NDDN), and AmeriFlux (

Eddy covariance The eddy covariance (also known as eddy correlation and eddy flux) is a key atmospheric measurement technique to measure and calculate vertical turbulent fluxes within atmospheric boundary layers. The method analyses high-frequency wind and scal ...

Airline crash

This mountain range is also home to some of the remains of a

Douglas DC-4 The Douglas DC-4 is an American four-engined (piston), propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Military versions of the plane, the C-54 and R5D, served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s ...

aircraft, operated as

United Airlines Flight 409 United Air Lines Flight 409 was a scheduled flight which originated in New York City, New York. The final flight destination was San Francisco, California, with stops in Chicago, Denver and Salt Lake City. The aircraft operating the service, a Do ...

. The aircraft crashed into Medicine Bow Peak on October 6, 1955, killing all 66 people on board.

References

External links

*
Medicine Bow Mountains @ PeakbaggerMedicine Bow Mountains on summitpost.orgSnowy Range info page on summitpost.orgSnowy Range photo album on summitpost.org
{{Authority control Ranges of the Rocky Mountains Mountain ranges of Colorado Mountain ranges of Wyoming Landforms of Larimer County, Colorado Landforms of Jackson County, Colorado Landforms of Albany County, Wyoming Landforms of Carbon County, Wyoming