Geological history of the Yellowstone national park

For the most part the mountains are made up of coarse crystalline gneisses and schists, probably of Archean age, flanked on the northern spurs by upturned Paleozoic strata. To the east of the Tetons, across the broad valley of the Upper Snake, generally known as Jackson Hole, lies the well-known Wind River Range, famous from the earliest days of the Rocky Mountain trappers. The northern end of this range is largely composed of Mesozoic strata, single ridges of Cretaceous sandstone penetrating still farther northward into the regions of the park and protruding above the great flows of lava. THE ABSAROKA RANGE ALONG THE EASTERN EDGE OF THE PARK. A long the entire eastern side of the park stretches the Absaroka Range so called from the Indian name of the Crow Nation. The Absaroka Range is intimately connected with the Wind River Range, the two being so closely related that any line of separation must be drawn more or less arbitrarily, based more upon geological structures and forms of erosion than upon physical limitations. The Absarokas offer for more than 80 miles a bold, unbroken barrier; a rough, rugged country, dominated by high peaks and crags from 10,000 to 11,000 feet in height. The early trappers found it a forbidding land; prospectors who followed them, a barren one. At the northeast corner of the park a confused mass of mountains connects the Absarokas with the Snowy Range.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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