OCR Text |
Show INDIVID [JAL PLATEAUS. ' 3 up of three component masses, or membersâ€"the Pavant at the north end, the Tushar in the middle, and the Markagunt at the south. The Pavant is a curious admixture of plateau and sierra, the eastern side being tabular in form and detail, while the western side is a common mountain front, like many others found in the Great Basin. The Tushar is also a composite structure, its northern half being a wild bristling cordillera of grand dimensions and altitudes, crowned with snowy peaks, while the southern half is conspicuously tabular. The Markagunt is a true plateau, of the normal type and of great expanse, and though very lofty (about 11,000 feet), is in utter contrast to a mountain uplift. A narrow, and in some portions profound, valley separates the western from the middle range(of plateaus. This is the Sevier Valley, bearing a small river of the same name, which collects the drainage of the greater part of the district and pours it into a wretched salina of the Great Basin, where it is evaporated. But the valley is an important one, because it is one of the principal highways of travel, and, still more, because it has already become the granary of Utah, and promises to increase in importance as an agricultural district. The second range of plateaus consists of the Sevier Plateau on the north and the Paunsagunt Plateau on the south. The Sevier Plateau is 80 miles in length and only 12 to 20 in width. Its great elongation and the bold sculpture of its fronts would assimilate it to a mountain range, and such it seems to be in some portions of its extent as we look up to its grand pediments from the valley below. But its structure and topography are seen to be conspicuously tabular when viewed from lofty standpoints. It is cut in twain near the middle by a tremendous gorge, which carries the East Fork of the Sevier River, which drains the plateaus to the eastward and southward. The Paunsagunt Plateau is a flat-topped mass, projecting southward in the continuation of the long axis of the Sevier Plateau, bounded on three sides by lofty battlements of marvelous sculpture and glowing color. Its terminus looks over line after line of cliffs to the southward and down to the forlorn wastes of that strange desert which constitutes the district of the Kaibabs and the drainage sj^stem of the Grand Canon of the Colorado River. |