Page 132 - Early Naturalists of the Black Range

Willis Thomas Lee
Lee may be best known for his work on identifying the coal fields of New Mexico.
Some of his other works are far more important to us in the Black Range. In 1904 and 1905 Lee was studying the water resources of the Rio Grande Valley. He published his findings in Water Resources of the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico and Their Development, Water-Supply and Irrigation Paper No. 188 of the U.S. Geological Survey, 1907. The map to the right and the detail on the following page are from that work.
In 1906/1907, Lee reported on “a partial skeleton of Triceratops, a Late Cretaceous horned dinosaur, from what later became known as the McRae Formation near Elephant Butte. Little was collected before Elephant Butte reservoir covered the area, but the ceratopsian Lee discovered was later determined to be indeterminate or perhaps another genus such as Torosaurus, and the McRae now is known to contain a dinosaur fauna of modest diversity and of very late Cretaceous age.” (Celebrating New Mexico’s Centennial - The Geology of New Mexico as Understood in 1912: An Essay for the Centennial of New Mexico Statehood, Part 2, Barry S. Kues, University of New Mexico, p. 41.)
From “The Face of the Earth...” (See next page.) “Fig. 53 — Canyon in sedimentary rocks near the mouth of the Pecos River, Texas. The rocks consist of flat-lying strata, and the tortuous lines resembling the grain in wood denote the outcrops of hard layers and the benches formed on these layers by erosion. This photograph illustrates the use of air photography in geological reconnaissance.” p. 71
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