The Medicine Bow River is a 167-mile-long (269 km) tributary of the North Platte River , in southern Wyoming in the United States .
17-699: It rises in the Snowy Range , flowing out of the North Gap Lake, in southeastern Carbon County . It flows north, past Elk Mountain , then northeast, then northwest past the town of Medicine Bow and between the Shirley Mountains to the north and the Medicine Bow Mountains to the south. Near the town of Medicine Bow the Medicine Bow River is joined by its two largest tributaries, Rock Creek and
34-402: A convergent boundary in tectonics. The exposed geology consists of a series of northeast- striking, steeply-dipping shear zones . These separate Archean crust to the north from 1800- to 1600-million-year-old ( Ma ) to the south. The Wyoming craton north of the belt is an Archean basement with a cover of younger miogeoclinal strata (sedimentary rock deposited on the passive margin of
51-610: A mountain range in the Rocky Mountains that extend 100 miles (160 km) from northern Colorado into southern Wyoming . The northern extent of this range is the sub-range the Snowy Range . From the northern end of Colorado's Never Summer Mountains , the Medicine Bow mountains extend north from Cameron Pass along the border between Larimer and Jackson counties in Colorado and northward into south central Wyoming. In Wyoming,
68-454: A continent.) The craton is intruded by dikes and sills of tholeiitic basalt with a minimum age of 2000 Ma, and this is taken as the time at which the Wyoming craton was rifted from a larger craton to produce the passive margin. The Yavapai province south of the belt contains no Archean crust, and it is intruded by granitoid rock with radiometric dates between 1780 and 1630 Ma. This province
85-723: A few lakes in the northern part of the range. Since 1987, the Glacier Lakes area of the Snowy Range has been home to the Glacier Lakes Ecosystem Experiments Site (GLEES), a field unit of the Rocky Mountain Research Station , United States Forest Service . Areas of scientific inquiry at the site include atmospheric pollutant deposition, forest carbon and water vapor cycling, effect of insect outbreaks, and alpine lake and stream hydrology. The site
102-625: Is 642 hectares (1,590 acres) in extent and hosts facilities for the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), the National Dry Deposition Network (NDDN), and AmeriFlux ( Eddy covariance ). This mountain range is also home to some of the remains of a Douglas DC-4 aircraft, operated as United Airlines Flight 409 . The aircraft crashed into Medicine Bow Peak on October 6, 1955, killing all 66 people on board. Cheyenne belt The Cheyenne Belt
119-656: Is interpreted as eugeoclinal rock (rock formed in an island arc). Additional granitoid intrusions that are 1400 Ma in age are interpreted as intrusions that took place after the Yavapai province was sutured to the Wyoming province. The belt extends west but becomes poorly defined in the Great Basin . One reconstruction places the western extension of the Cheyenne belt just south of the Idaho - Utah and Idaho- Nevada border. The structure of
136-591: Is the tectonic suture zone between the Archean -age Wyoming craton to the north and the Paleoproterozoic -age Yavapai province to the south. It runs through the southeastern quadrant of the state of Wyoming , United States. It was formed during the Paleoproterozoic Medicine Bow orogeny between 1.78 and 1.74 billion years ago when island arcs collided with the Wyoming craton. This is an example of
153-690: The Laramide Orogeny . Beginning about 70 million years ago, the Rockies began uplifting along thrust faults that broke up the Precambrian granite of Earth's crust . By 50 million years ago, all of Wyoming's major mountain ranges were elevated and the major basins defined. Rocks exposed along the flanks and peaks of the Medicine Bow Mountains span the Precambrian to modern, with the peaks composed of 2.4-2.0 billion year old Medicine Peak Quartzite. This rock
170-645: The Little Medicine Bow River . It joins the North Platte in the Seminoe Reservoir , with the lower 10 miles (16 km) of the river forming an arm of the reservoir. 42°00′9.9″N 106°41′12.26″W / 42.002750°N 106.6867389°W / 42.002750; -106.6867389 This article related to a river in Wyoming is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Snowy Range The Medicine Bow Mountains are
187-479: The Cheyenne belt suggests that it is a deeply eroded master decollement . In other words, it exposes the contact between the subducting tectonic plate and the overriding tectonic place in a subduction zone . The question of which plate was the subducting plate is still a matter of research. Research during the 1980s suggested that the overriding plate was the Yavapai arc, based on the presence of calc-akaline intrusions (typical of volcanism in an overriding plate) in
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#1732852265747204-401: The Wyoming plate. This model is supported by isotopic evidence and by radiometric dates suggesting arc volcanism had ceased in the Yavapai island arc 20 million years before it accreted to the Wyoming plate. The collision of the Yavapai arcs with the Wyoming craton began with in a mountain-building event from 1780 to 1750 Ma called the Medicine Bow orogeny. This tectonics article is
221-415: The Yavapai province. Further evidence is provided by the higher degree of metamorphism of rock on the Yavapai side of the decollement versus the Wyoming side, indicating that rock was brought upwards from greater depth along the decollement. However, more recent research calls this into question, suggesting either plate might have been the subducting plate but favoring subduction of the Yavapai plate beneath
238-757: The range is located within the Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming. The highest peak on the Wyoming side is Medicine Bow Peak (12,013 feet (3,662 m)). The range is drained along the western flank by the Michigan and Canadian rivers, tributaries of the North Platte in North Park . On its eastern flank it is drained by the Laramie River , another tributary of the North Platte. The Medicine Bow Mountains resulted from continental compression during
255-662: The range sits west of Laramie , in Albany and Carbon counties to the route of the Union Pacific Railroad and U.S. Interstate 80 . The mountains often serve as a symbol for the city of Laramie . The range is home to Snowy Range Ski Area . The highest peak in the range is Clark Peak (12,960 feet (3,950 m)), located in the Rawah Wilderness along the southern end of the range in Northern Colorado . Much of
272-446: Was assembled, is exposed in the Medicine Bow Mountains. Wildlife abounds in these mountains, with mule deer, elk, moose, black bear, mountain lions, coyotes, marmots, pika, Richardson's ground squirrels, bobcats, and lynx as well as a tremendous variety of birds. Brook and rainbow trout as well as grayling and golden trout are found in the streams. A disjunct population of arctic fairy shrimp (Brachinecta paludosa) has been documented in
289-512: Was once a shallow marine sand deposit that has since been compressed and heated during burial, forming the metamorphic rock , quartzite . What may be traces of multicellular animals are preserved in this rock, making it of particular interest to paleontologists . The Cheyenne belt , the 1.78–1.74 billion year old suture between the Wyoming craton and the Yavapai province that formed as North America
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