Grand+Mesa

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Driving East along I-70 You pass Mt. Garfield which is described on another page. As you cross the river and turn around Mt. Lincoln and enter Debuque Canyon please notice the rounded basalt till to the right side of the Interstate. If you know anything about this, please let me know! The canyon cuts through the Mesa Verde formation. The Mesa Verde Formation is late cretaceous in origin and was formed along the shore of a big lake, as the shore retreated and advanced different layers were deposited.

The Cameo Power plant, a coal burning electricity generation stations

The Grand Valley Diversion Dam source for water for the canal system

Parking Area The best and safest place to get nose to rock is the parking area just past the diversion dam. This is the old road, when they tunnels were built the DOT turned this strech into a pulloff media type="custom" key="9260456" Rock Slide

For the tour, I used the Debuque exit to turn around and return west.

Exit up Plateau Creek, there is a little parking area with kiosks explain much about the Grand Mesa.

The Grand Mesa The Grand Mesa is the largest mesa in the world. I t has an area of around 2,167 square miles and its highest point is Crater Peak which is around 11,327 feet above sea level. The Mesa also has around 300 lakes. It is generally thought to have once been a volcano but that is a common misconception. The mesa is the result of a volcanic vent that oozed lava and formed a hard basalt layer on its top. The volcanic layer is 30 million years old and was created back when the Modern Rockies where formed. The lowest layers are yellow and gray Mancos Shale from the early Cretaceous. The Mesa Verde Group that forms a cliff about halfway up the side of the mesa, and the top layer rests on the Tertiary shale and sandstone known as the Green River and Wasatch Formations.

Teredolites

Bibliography and Citations
Chronic, Halka, and Felicie Williams. //Roadside Geology of Colorado//. Missoula, MT: Mountain Pub., 2002. Print.