Geology Underfoot Along Colorado's Front Range

The transition from the relatively flat Great Plains to the craggy peaks of Colorado's Front Range is one of North America's most abrupt topographical contrasts. The epic, 1,800-million-year geologic story behind this amazing landscape is even more awe inspiring. In Geology Underfoot along Colorado's Front Range, the most recent addition to the Geology Underfoot series, authors (and geoscientists) Lon Abbott and Terri Cook narrate the Front Range's tale, from its humble beginnings as a flat, nondescript seafloor through several ghostly incarnations as a towering mountain range. The book's 21 chapters, or vignettes, lead you to easily accessible stops along the Front Range's highways and byways, where you'll meet the apatosaur and other dinosaurs who roamed the floodplains and beaches that once covered the Front Range; look for diamonds in rare, out-of-the-way volcanic pipes; learn how America's mountain, Pikes Peak, developed from molten magma miles below the surface only to become an important visual landmark for early Great Plains' travelers; and walk the Gangplank, a singularly important plateau for both nineteenth-century westward expansion and our understanding of the Front Range's most recent exhumation. A healthy dose of full-color illustrations and photos demystify the concepts put forth in the authors' elegant, insightful prose. With Geology Underfoot along Colorado's Front Range in hand, you'll feel like you're traveling through time as you explore the Front Range's hidden geologic treasures.

Lon Abbott is a geology faculty member at the University of Colorado at Boulder whose recent research has focused on the cutting of the Grand Canyon and the formation of the Colorado Rockies. He received a bachelor's degree in geology and geophysics from the University of Utah and a PhD in earth science from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he specialized in the study of mountain building. Lon's research has taken him from remote mountain peaks in Papua New Guinea to a 15,000-foot-deep ocean trench near Costa Rica.Terri Cook is a freelance science writer and member of the National Association of Science Writers. She earned a master's degree in geology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where she studied rocks from deep-sea hot springs, and an undergraduate degree in archaeology from Tufts University. Her combined interests in geology, archaeology, and experiencing new cultures have led her across six continents. Lon and Terri are coauthors of Geology Underfoot in Northern Arizona (Mountain Press) and Hiking the Grand Canyon's Geology.