Douglas Pass, elevation , is a mountain pass in the

Book Cliffs The Book Cliffs are a series of desert mountains and cliffs in western Colorado and eastern Utah in the western United States. They are so named because the cliffs of Cretaceous sandstone that cap many of the south-facing buttes appear similar ...

of western

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 wes ...

. It is located in Garfield County and is traversed by State Highway 139. The pass divides the watersheds of West Douglas Creek to the north and East Salt Creek to the south. It is named for the Northern Ute, Chief Douglas. The pass is not an especially high summit relative to other Colorado passes, and the road, though reasonably steep on the south side (7%), has no tight spots and only a few switchbacks. The summit gives an unusual view of the northeast face of the La Sal Mountains (twelve peaks over 12,000 feet), away in Utah. The remainder of the drive is basically in valleys following creeks. The Utes had established a trail over the pass, which was subsequently used by European explorers and settlers. The Domínguez–Escalante expedition crossed the pass in 1776. Following the Ute trail, a road over the pass was constructed in the 1920s. The mountain consists of shale strata belonging to the

Green River Formation The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sediments are deposited in very fine ...

, exposures of which can be seen on the south side of the pass.Boak, J., Sarg, R., Tanavsuu, K. and Yeakel, J. 2009. Oil shale of the Piceance Basin, Colorado. Colorado School of Mines, Guidebook of the 29th Oil Shale Symposium field trip, October 22–23, 2009, Stop 4.

References

Mountain passes of Colorado Landforms of Garfield County, Colorado Transportation in Garfield County, Colorado {{Colorado-geo-stub