FROM THE FRUITA INTERCHANGE on I-70, the overpass leads north into the town of Fruita, and Colorado Highway 340 leads south about 2-1/2 miles to the West Entrance of Colorado National Monument. One mile south we cross the new bridge over the Colorado River; the old bridge formerly connecting Fruita with the Monument may be seen half a mile upstream. Just south of the new bridge we see sandstone on the left and green shale on the right, both part of the Burro Canyon Formation. The high hill on the left is made up of brightly colored siltstones and mudstones of the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation capped by the basal sandstone of the Burro Canyon Formation. On the southeast side of this hill is another bronze plaque set in a masonry monument, similar to the one at Riggs Hill (fig. 39), commemorating the discovery and removal in 1900 by Elmer S. Riggs of a skeleton of the immense dinosaur Apatosaurus excelcus Marsh. (See figure 23B). About 1-3/4 miles northwest of the new bridge is the Fruita Paleontological area discussed on page 50.

Just south of the hill, the highway curves gently to the left across a relatively flat surface of the Morrison Formation. To the right may be seen good exposures of the Entrada Sandstone, at the north end of which curbstones were quarried from thin beds of the white Moab Member for use in some of the parking areas along Rim Rock Drive. Some of the beds are ripple marked³¹ from wave action along ancient beaches or within ancient lagoons. Some ripple-marked curbstones from this quarry may be seen in the parking area at Red Canyon Overlook, and elsewhere in the Monument.

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³¹Lohman, 1965a. p. 44.

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As we approach the Monument we see that to the left the rock strata are bent downward toward us along what geologists call a monocline (see figs. 27 and 30), but to the right may be seen cliffs of dark Proterozoic rocks surmounted by slopes of the red Chinle Formation and cliffs of the buff Wingate Sandstone capped by the lowermost beds of the resistant Kayenta Formation. The bent and broken rocks ahead are well shown in figure 33.

About 1-1/2 miles south of the Colorado River we reach the T intersection noted previously—at the end of the trip from Grand Junction through The Redlands to the West Entrance of the Monument—and we are ready for our trip through the Monument.