Sundowners #1
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Sundowners #1
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture & Enhancement
Description
The Hogback area along U.S. Highway 34 west of Loveland contains a lot of beautiful scenery along the northern Colorado Front Range. I’ve been photographing this area for several years during different seasons and am always amazed at what I see. There is however, much more than what meets the eye…
Just before the rise of the present-day Rocky Mountains 70 million years ago, the various rock strata lay flat, one on top of another, on the ocean floor of the Western Interior Seaway. The red sandstone of the Fountain Formation was at the very bottom. Above it lay the Lyons sandstone, the Lykins limestone, and the claystone and limestone of the Morrison Formation.
When the geological uplift during the famous Laramide Orogeny began during the late Cretaceous Period, the overlying formations rode upwards on top of it. Their steep angle suggests that some massive rock slides took place but they are mostly the result of down slope erosion. The red rocks of the Fountain Formation, as well as the ridges of the Dakota hogback, are the eroded remnants of layers of sediment which extended to the peaks of the current Rockies.
In sedimentary formations, hogbacks are formed when the formation is tilted, like the Flatirons near Boulder with a softer layer of rock underneath a hard layer on the top. The softer layer is eroded faster, leaving way to the easily distinguished steep escarpments at the top of hogbacks, which make up the entirety of the harder formation now visible.
While erosion of the underlying soft rock is happening, shale is also undermining the support of the harder rock allowing sandstone form the top of the hogback. Large pieces of sandstone periodically cleave away like tall glaciers entering the sea often dramatically calf off huge blocks of ice.
The Dakota Hogback is a remnant from a period of mountain-building that occurred approximately 70 million years ago, when the modern Rocky Mountains were uplifted in a process that tilted and exposed older, underlying rock strata -- some fossil-bearing.
These older rock layers were deposited 140 million to 95 million years ago, when Colorado was a broad, flat plain populated by dinosaurs.
In any case, I’ll continue to visit this area with my camera and capture the changing seasons and views and not dwell too deeply on the geology itself.
Some digital effects were applied to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered images will not contain the Fine Art America watermark.
Image copyright 2020 Jon Burch Photography
Uploaded
June 3rd, 2020
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Viewed 178 Times - Last Visitor from Austin, TX on 04/19/2024 at 6:42 PM
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