From 1946 until about 1956 I carried out fieldwork intermittently on the
geology and artesian water supply of the Grand Junction area, Colorado,
the results of which have been published.[1] The area mapped
geologically contains about 332 square miles in the west-central part of
Mesa County and includes all of Colorado National Monument. During the
fieldwork several successive custodians or superintendents and several
park naturalists urged that upon completion of my professional paper I
prepare a brief account of the geology of the Monument in terms
understandable by laymen, and which could be sold at the Visitor Center.
This I was happy to do and there resulted “The geologic story of
Colorado National Monument,”[2] published by the Colorado and Black
Canyon Natural History Association in cooperation with the National Park
Service. This report contained colored sketches by John R. Stacy and a
colored cover, but the photographs and many of the drawings were
reproduced in black and white.
Later, after I had prepared popular style reports containing mostly
color photographs on Canyonlands[3] and Arches[4] National Parks,
officials of Colorado National Monument and I discussed the possibility
of preparing a revised and enlarged edition of my 1965 report containing
mainly color photographs, inasmuch as the supply of the black and white
edition was nearing exhaustion, and later became out of print. At the
meeting in the Monument on June 8, 1976, attended by Robert (Bob) E.
Benton, Superintendent, A. J. (Jerry) Banta, Supervising Park Ranger,
Margaret Short, Park Naturalist and Secretary of the Natural History
Association, and me, it was agreed that: (1) A revised and enlarged
edition containing mostly color photographs should be prepared for
publication as a bulletin of the U.S. Geological Survey, and (2) that
the Colorado and Black Canyon Natural History Association gave its
permission for use of any or all of the copyrighted material in the
first edition. The present report resulted.
The cover is a duotone of a 9- × 12-cm infrared photograph of
Independence Monument taken by me. (See also fig. 6.) Most of the color
photographs were taken by me on 4- × 5-inch or 9- × 12-cm tripod mounted
cameras using lenses of several focal lengths, but I took some with
35-mm cameras. Some of the color photographs and all the black and white
ones were taken by those credited in the captions, to whom grateful
acknowledgment is made. The points from which most of the photographs
were taken are shown in figure 26.
[Illustration: West side of Otto’s Monument
ROCK OF AGES
CROSS OF AGES]