Page 128 - Mines Facilities Plan

These glaciations were offset by warm interglacial periods, and as the glaciers ablated, meltwater and wind helped deposit clay, silt, sand, gravel, cobbles, and boulders in the form of loess (wind deposited) and alluvium (stream) throughout the Colorado Front Range. Alluvium deposits including the Verdos, Slocum, Louviers, and Broadway, among others, overlie older Tertiary and Cretaceous formations and are prevalent on campus. Colluviu

the Great Plains forming the Colorado Piedmont. A series of alpine glaciations
and Denver Formation tell a story about the paleoenvironments which used to
Fault, a high angle thrust fault just to the west. Steeply dipping bedrock of the
Quaternary Period, concurrently as the Colorado Piedmont was being carved.
years ago, streams flowing from the mountains down-cut and excavated into
the campus, exhibiting high angles of dip due to the presence of the Golden
Fountain Formation, Pierre Shale, Fox Hills Sandstone, Laramie Formation,
over Colorado within the early Cretaceous Period depositing predominantly
Formation. As a result of further regional uplift approximately 5 to 10 million
the Colorado Piedmont section of the Great Plains Physiographic Province.
Formation. The Laramide Orogeny uplifted the Rocky Mountains during the
ed as
seas continued regression, a coastal plain environment dominated eastern
occurred within Colorado and the southern Rockies during the early to late
late Cretaceous and early Tertiary Periods. Subsequent erosion deposited
sandstone making up the Fox Hills Sandstone Formation. Then during the
sediments east of the Rocky Mountains, which would become the Denver
Many bedrock formations are exposed near the surface, or exist beneath
The Mines campus is situated east of the Rocky Mountain foothills within
The Western Interior Seaway transgressed and regressed several times
Colorado depositing shale, sandstone, and Lignite coal as the Laramie
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SUBSURFACE SOIL CONDITIONS

dominate the Mines campus. shale of the Pierre Shale Formation in a marine environment. As the Western Interior Seaway experienced progradation, its shoreline lithifi Colorado School of Mines Facilities Master Plan 122