The United Air Lines A Geological and Geographical Description of the Route From New York to Chicago and San Francisco Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The United Air Lines: A Geological and Geographical Description of the Route From New York to Chicago and San Francisco

The long sprawling spurs of complex mountain ranges descend from the higher summits, gradually dying out as foothills on the adjacent plains like the outspread paw of a huge beast. Some complex mountain areas, notably the Wasatch and the basin ranges of Nevada, are bewildering, tumbling masses of sharp-crested ridges and pointed peaks which in the early morning and late evening hours cast long and weird shadows far over the surrounding country. (fig. 2) Along the air route no great and active volcanoes are encountered, but several small and very perfect cinder cones may be seen in western Nevada. The craters of these cones are still intact or only slightly breached by stream erosion, and in one or two instances an easily recognized lava flow extends from the base of the cone for a mile or so over the adjacent land. The location of these small volcanoes on a fracture zone along which the molten rock has found a way to the surface is also interesting and significant. Conspicuous white or delicately hued hot spring deposits like the mammoth terraces of Yellowstone Park are likewise to be observed along fault lines at the base of several of the block mountains of the Great Basin.

To recount the bewildering variety of detailed forms resulting from the activi ties of streams, of glaciers, of waves, and even of the wind would resemble an index to a treatise on geology. To observe these things in their proper setting is, however, an experience of the greatest interest. Take at random the marvelous festoons of glacial moraines in northern Illinois and Indiana, revealing them-selves by the many lakes and ponds, the irregular roads and the wood lots of the farms or even by gravel pits, rather than by their actual topography which is too subdued to be detected from aloft; or the old beaches of Lake Michigan running for miles through the railroad yards and the factory sites on the outskirts of Chicago; or the shorelines of ancient Lake Bonneville on the flanks of the mountains near Great Salt Lake looking like artificial roadways or railroad embankments; or the braided channel of the South Platte River in central Nebraska with its ribbon of irrigated land on either Side; the sea of sand hills covering thousands of square miles in the western part of that same state; the long alluvial plains sloping gently away from all the ranges of the Great Basin region; and the embayed shore of Lake Erie at Sandusky Bay. These features and many others of equal significance would each one suffice as the key wherewith to unlock a long and interesting story.

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