Front Range

For the Urban Corridor, see Front Range Urban Corridor.

Front Range
Front Range Peaks in the Indian Peaks Wilderness.
Highest point
Peak	Grays Peak
Elevation	14,278 ft (4,352 m)
Coordinates	39°38′02″N 105°49′01″W / 39.63389°N 105.81694°W / 39.63389; -105.81694Coordinates: 39°38′02″N 105°49′01″W / 39.63389°N 105.81694°W / 39.63389; -105.81694
Geography
The Front Range (excluding the Laramie Mountains) is shown highlighted on a map of the western U.S.
Country	United States
States	Colorado and Wyoming
Parent range	Rocky Mountains

The Front Range is a mountain range of the Southern Rocky Mountains of North America located in the central portion of the U.S. State of Colorado, and southeastern portion of the U.S. State of Wyoming.^[1] It is the first mountain range encountered moving west along the 40th parallel north across the Great Plains of North America. The Front Range runs north-south between Casper, Wyoming and Pueblo, Colorado and rises nearly 10,000 feet above the Great Plains. Longs Peak, Mount Evans, and Pikes Peak are its most prominent peaks, visible from the Interstate 25 corridor. The area is a popular destination for mountain biking, hiking, climbing, and camping during the warmer months and for skiing and snowboarding during winter. Millions of years ago the present-day Front Range was home to ancient mountain ranges, deserts, beaches, and even oceans.^[2]

The name "Front Range" is also applied to the Front Range Urban Corridor, the populated region of Colorado and Wyoming just east of the mountain range and extending from Cheyenne, Wyoming south to Pueblo, Colorado. This urban corridor benefits from the weather-moderating effect of the Front Range mountains, which help block prevailing storms.

Geology

Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods.

Sandstone slabs along the eastern edge of the front range

Pikes Peak Granite

About 1 billion years ago, the earth was producing massive amounts of molten rock that would one day amalgamate, drift together and combine, to ultimately form the continents we live on today. In the Colorado region, this molten rock spewed and cooled, forming what we now know as the Precambrian Pikes Peak Granite. Over the next 500 million years, little is known about changes in the sedimentation (sediment deposition) after the granite was produced. However, at about 500 – 300 million years ago, the region began to sink and sediments began to deposit in the newly formed accommodation space. Eroded granite produced sand particles that began to form strata, layers of sediment, in the sinking basin. Sedimentation would continue to take place until about 300 million years ago.^[2]

Fountain formation

Around 300 million years ago, the sinking suddenly reversed, and the sediment-covered granite began to uplift, giving rise to the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. Over the next 150 million years, during uplift the mountains would continue to erode and cover themselves in their own sediment. Wind, gravity, rainwater, snow, and ice-melt supplied rivers that ultimately carved through the granite mountains and eventually led to their end. The sediment from these mountains lies in the Fountain Formation today. Red Rocks Amphitheater outside of Denver, Colorado, is actually set into the Fountain Formation.^[2]

Lyons Sandstone

At 280 million years ago, sea levels were low and present-day Colorado was part of the super-continent Pangaea. Sand deserts covered most of the area spreading as dunes seen in the rock record, known today as the Lyons Sandstone. These dunes appear to be cross-bedded and show various fossil footprints and leaf imprints in many of the strata making up the section.^[2]

Lykins Formation

30 million years later, the sediment deposition was still taking place with the introduction of the Lykins Formation. This formation can be best attributed to its wavy layers of muddy limestone and signs of stromatolites that thrived in a smelly tidal flat at present-day Colorado. 250 million years ago, the Ancestral Rockies were burying themselves while the shoreline was present during the break-up of Pangaea. This formation began right after Earth’s largest extinction 251 million years ago at the Permian-Triassic Boundary. Ninety percent of the planet’s marine life was destroyed and a great deal on land as well.^[2]

Morrison Formation

After 100 million years of deposition, a new environment brought rise to a new formation, the sandstone Morrison Formation. The Morrison Formation contains some of the best fossils of the Late Jurassic. It is especially known for its sauropod tracks and sauropod bones among other dinosaur fossils. As identified by the fossil record, the environment was filled with various types of vegetation such as ferns and Zamites.^[2] While this time period boasts many types of plants, grass had not yet evolved.^[2]

Dakota Sandstone

The Dakota Sandstone, which was deposited 100 million years ago towards Colorado’s eastern coast, shows evidence of ferns, and dinosaur tracks. Sheets of ripple marks can be seen on some of the strata, confirming the shallow-sea environment.^[2]

Pierre Shale

Over the next 30 million years, the region was finally taken over by a deep sea, the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, and deposited mass amounts of shale over the area known as the Pierre Shale. Both the thick section of shale and the marine life fossils found (ammonites and skeletons of fish and such marine reptiles as mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and extinct species of sea turtles, along with rare dinosaur and bird remains). Colorado eventually drained from being at the bottom of an ocean to land again, giving yield to another fossiliferous rock layer, the Denver Formation. At about 68 million years ago, the Front Range began to rise again due to the Laramide Orogeny in the west.^[2]

Denver Formation

Front Range near Estes Park, Colorado.

The Denver Formation contained fossils and bones from dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. While the forests of vegetation, dinosaurs, and other organisms thrived, their reign would come to an end at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (which is also known as the K-T boundary). In an instant, millions of species are obliterated from a meteor impact in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. While this extinction lead to the dinosaurs’ and other organisms’ demise, some life did prevail to repopulate the earth as it recovered from this tremendous disaster. The uplifted Front Range continued to constantly erode and, by 40 million years ago, the range was once again buried in its own rubble.^[2]

Castle Rock Conglomerate

Suddenly, 37 million years ago, a great volcanic eruption took place in the Collegiate Range and covered the landscape in molten hot ash that instantly torched and consumed everything across the landscape. An entire lush environment was capped in a matter of minutes with 20 feet of extremely resistant rock, rhyolite. However, as seen before, life rebounds, and after a few million years mass floods cut through the rhyolite and eroded much of it as plants and animals began to recolonize the landscape. The mass flooding and erosion of the volcanic rock gave way to the Castle Rock Conglomerate that can be found in the Front Range.^[2]

Quaternary deposits

Eventually, at about 10 million years ago, the Front Range began to rise up again and the resistant granite in the heart of the mountains thrust upwards and stood tall, while the weaker sediments deposited above it eroded away. As the Front Range rose, streams and recent (16,000 years ago) glaciations during the Quaternary age literally unburied the range by cutting through the weaker sediment and giving rise to the granitic peaks present today.^[2] This was the last step in forming the present-day geologic sequence and history of today’s Front Range.^[2]

The Front Range as viewed from Greenwood Village south of Denver, Mount Evans is on the far right

Prominent peaks

The Front Range includes the highest peaks along the eastern edge of the Rockies. The highest mountain peak in the Front Range is Grays Peak. Other notable mountains include Torreys Peak, Mount Evans, Longs Peak, Pikes Peak, and Mount Bierstadt.

Longs Peak

Pikes Peak

Mount Evans

The 20 Mountain Peaks of the Front Range With At Least 500 Meters of Topographic Prominence
Rank	Mountain Peak	Subrange	Elevation	Prominence	Isolation
1	Grays Peak^[3] NGS	Front Range	7003435200000000000♠14,278 ft 4352 m	7002844296000000000♠2,770 ft 844 m	7004402700000000000♠25.0 mi 40.3 km
2	Mount Evans NGS	Front Range	7003434800000000000♠14,265 ft 4348 m	7002843991000000000♠2,769 ft 844 m	7004157600000000000♠9.79 mi 15.76 km
3	Longs Peak NGS	Front Range	7003434600000000000♠14,259 ft 4346 m	7002896112000000000♠2,940 ft 896 m	7004701900000000000♠43.6 mi 70.2 km
4	Pikes Peak NGS	Pikes Peak Massif	7003430231000000000♠14,115 ft 4302 m	7003168554400000000♠5,530 ft 1686 m	7004978200000000000♠60.8 mi 97.8 km
5	Mount Silverheels NGS PB	Front Range	7003421500000000000♠13,829 ft 4215 m	7002695857999900000♠2,283 ft 696 m	7003882000000000000♠5.48 mi 8.82 km
6	Bald Mountain^[4] PB	Front Range	7003417280500000000♠13,690 ft 4173 m	7002639775000000000♠2,099 ft 640 m	7004120900000000000♠7.51 mi 12.09 km
7	Bard Peak^[4] PB	Front Range	7003415948400000000♠13,647 ft 4159 m	7002518465000000000♠1,701 ft 518 m	7003874000000000000♠5.43 mi 8.74 km
8	Hagues Peak NGS PB	Mummy Range	7003413700000000000♠13,573 ft 4137 m	7002737616000000000♠2,420 ft 738 m	7004256200000000000♠15.92 mi 25.6 km
9	North Arapaho Peak^[4] PB	Indian Peaks PB	7003411717199999999♠13,508 ft 4117 m	7002507492000000000♠1,665 ft 507 m	7004247800000000000♠15.40 mi 24.8 km
10	Parry Peak^[4]	Front Range	7003408334000000000♠13,397 ft 4083 m	7002527609000000000♠1,731 ft 528 m	7004152200000000000♠9.46 mi 15.22 km
11	Mount Richthofen^[4] PB	Front Range	7003394577000000000♠12,945 ft 3946 m	7002816864000000000♠2,680 ft 817 m	7004155400000000000♠9.66 mi 15.54 km
12	Specimen Mountain^[4] PB	Front Range	7003380826100000000♠12,494 ft 3808 m	7002527609000000000♠1,731 ft 528 m	7003782000000000000♠4.86 mi 7.82 km
13	Bison Peak NGS PB	Tarryall Mountains PB	7003378940000000000♠12,432 ft 3789 m	7002747065000000000♠2,451 ft 747 m	7004308000000000000♠19.14 mi 30.8 km
14	Waugh Mountain^[4] PB	South Park Hills PB	7003357091000000000♠11,716 ft 3571 m	7002710184000000000♠2,330 ft 710 m	7004322200000000000♠20.0 mi 32.2 km
15	Black Mountain NGS PB	South Park Hills PB	7003355050000000000♠11,649 ft 3551 m	7002680923000000000♠2,234 ft 681 m	7004129200000000000♠8.03 mi 12.92 km
16	Williams Peak NGS PB	South Williams Fork Mountains PB	7003354180000000000♠11,620 ft 3542 m	7002624535000000000♠2,049 ft 625 m	7004173700000000000♠10.79 mi 17.37 km
17	Puma Peak^[4] PB	South Park Hills PB	7003352804900000000♠11,575 ft 3528 m	7002688848000000000♠2,260 ft 689 m	7004119700000000000♠7.44 mi 11.97 km
18	Thirtynine Mile Mountain^[4] PB	South Park Hills PB	7003352141400000000♠11,553 ft 3521 m	7002636422000000000♠2,088 ft 636 m	7004170800000000000♠10.61 mi 17.08 km
19	Twin Sisters Peaks^[4] PB	Front Range	7003348464200000000♠11,433 ft 3485 m	7002709574000000000♠2,328 ft 710 m	7003701000000000000♠4.36 mi 7.01 km
20	South Bald Mountain	Laramie Mountains	7003335500000000000♠11,007 ft 3355 m	7002562000000000000♠1,844 ft 562 m	7004219900000000000♠13.66 mi 22.0 km

Travel through the Front Range

The main interstates that run through the Front Range are Interstate 70, which crosses west of Denver, Colorado, and Interstate 80, which crosses near Laramie, Wyoming. U.S. Route 34 travels through the mountains near Loveland, Colorado. Along with roads that run through the Front Range, the Union Pacific Railroad operates two rail lines through the mountains, one, the Overland Route, which goes southern Wyoming, which runs parallel to I-80 for much of the way, and the other which is former Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad trackage, which runs parallel to the Colorado River and through the six and a half mile long Moffat Tunnel. The latter route, along with being a freight line, is also used by Amtrak's California Zephyr.

References

↑ http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic | U.S. Geological Survey confirms that the Laramie Mountains(range) are the northern extent of the Front Range.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Johnson, Kirk R.; et al. (2006). Ancient Denvers. Fulcrum Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55591-554-4.
↑ The summit of Grays Peak is the highest point on the Continental Divide of North America.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 The elevation of this summit has been converted from the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29) to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). National Geodetic Survey

External links

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Front Range.

"Front Range". Peakbagger.com.

State of Colorado

Denver (capital)

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