Basin and RangeThe first of John McPhee's works in his series on geology and geologists, Basin and Range is a book of journeys through ancient terrains, always in juxtaposition with travels in the modern world—a history of vanished landscapes, enhanced by the histories of people who bring them to light. The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale. |
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appeared basalt Basin and Range began bottom California called Cambrian canyon Carlin Carson Sink continent continental drift cottonwoods craton Cretaceous crust crystals cyanide Death Valley deep Deffeyes deposits Devonian earth edge Eocene erosion eventually fault blocks fifty flat formation formed fossils geologists geology granite happened hill Humboldt hundred miles hundred million Hutton hypothesis interstate island Jersey John McPhee Jurassic Kleinspehn layers limestone look Lovelock mantle melting Meramecian million years ago miner Miocene Mississippian mountains move Nevada ocean Oligocene Oquirrhs Ordovician Orogeny paleomagnetic Pennsylvanian Permian plate tectonics Playfair present ridges River road roadcut rock Salt Lake samples sand sandstone scale seafloor sediment shale Siccar Point side Sierra sill silver snow species spreading center story strata stream summits surface theory thousand feet tilting Tobin Range trench Triassic tuff turned volcanoes wall Wyoming zeolite