GRAND TETON Creation of the Teton Landscape: The Geologic Story of Grand Teton National Park

COVER

Front Cover: View west toward Grand Teton on skyline. Hedrick's Pond surrounded by "knob and kettle" topography is in foreground, tree-covered Burned Ridge moraine is in middle distance, and extending from it to foot of mountains is gray flat treeless glacial outwash plain. National Park Service photo by W. E. Dilley.

FOREWORD

THE STORY BEGINS
  First questions, brief answers
  An extraordinary story
  An astronaut's view
  A pilot's view
  A motorist's view
    View north
    View west
    View south
  A mountaineer's view

CARVING THE RUGGED PEAKS
  Steep mountain slopes—the perpetual battleground
  Rock disintegration and gravitational movement
  Running water cuts and carries
  Glaciers scour and transport
  Effects on Jackson Hole

MOUNTAIN UPLIFT
  Kinds of mountains
  Anatomy of faults
  Time and rate of uplift
  Why are mountains here?
  The restless land

ENORMOUS TIME AND DYNAMIC EARTH
  Framework of time
  Rocks and relative age
  Fossils and geologic time
  Radioactive clocks
  The yardstick of geologic time

PRECAMBRIAN ROCKS—THE CORE OF THE TETONS
  Ancient gneisses and schists
  Granite and pegmatite
  Black dikes
  Quartzite
  A backward glance
  The close of the Precambrian—end of the beginning

THE PALEOZOIC ERA—TIME OF LONG-VANISHED SEAS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE
  The Paleozoic sequence
  Alaska Basin—site of an outstanding rock and fossil record
  Advance and retreat of Cambrian seas; an example
  Younger Paleozoic formations

THE MESOZOIC—ERA OF TRANSITION
  Colorful first Mesozoic strata
  Drab Cretaceous strata
  Birth of the Rocky Mountains

TERTIARY—TIME OF MAMMALS, MOUNTAINS, LAKES, AND VOLCANOES
  Rise and burial of mountains
  The first big lake
  Development of mammals
  Volcanoes

QUATERNARY—TIME OF ICE, MORE LAKES, AND CONTINUED CRUSTAL DISTURBANCE
  Hoback normal fault
  Volcanic activity
  Preglacial lakes
  The Ice Age
  Modern glaciers

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

APPENDIX
  Acknowledgements
  Selected references—if you wish to read further
  About the authors
  Index of selected terms and features (omitted from the online edition)

View west up Cascade Canyon, with north face of Mt. Owen in center. National Park Service photo by H. D. Pownall.

Library of Congress Catalogue Card No.: 68-20628
ISBN 0-931895-08-1

1st Edition
1968

1st Revised Edition
1971

Reprinted 1979
Reprinted 1984
Reprinted 1989

An updated and revised edition can be obtained from
Grand Teton Natural History Association.

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To Fritiof M. Fryxell, geologist, teacher, writer, mountaineer, and the first ranger-naturalist in Grand Teton National Park. All who love and strive to understand the Teton landscape follow in his footsteps.

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