With scarcely a break, the Park Range-Gore Range structure continues southward into the Tenmile and Mosquito Ranges. These high ridges separate South Park from the upper Arkansas Valley, and include a cluster of very high peaks, Quandary, Mt. Lincoln, Mt. Democrat, and Mt. Bross, all over 14,000 feet in elevation.
Structurally, both the Tenmile Range and the Mosquito Range are highly asymmetrical [anticlines], gentle on the east and steeply faulted on the west. Paleozoic sedimentary rock layers containing many [fossils] cover large portions of the higher parts of these ranges, but two of the highest peaks, Mt. Bross and Mt. Lincoln, are capped by the Lincoln [Porphyry], a Tertiary intrusive, while Quandary Peak is Precambrian [granite].
These mountains are highly mineralized, and have been extensively explored and mined. The Climax Molybdenum Corporation operates an especially large mine at Climax, and the New Jersey Zinc Company has a large underground mine and mill at Gilman, on the western slopes of Tenmile Range.
Buffalo Peaks, two highly eroded volcanic mountains near the south end of Mosquito Range, are extrusions of [lava] and ash which have buried the axis of the Mosquito uplift. They are major volcanoes related to a group of small volcanic cones near Antero Junction, in South Park.
South of Buffalo Peaks, near Trout Creek Pass, the Mosquito Range loses altitude rapidly and merges with the rough country called the Arkansas Hills. Cinder cones, [dikes], and other evidences of Tertiary volcanic activity can be seen between Trout Creek Pass and Salida.
Sawatch Range
Bordering the Arkansas River valley on the west, the Sawatch Range includes Colorado’s highest mountain, Mt. Elbert (14,417 feet). With several other 14,000-foot summits, this range is the highest in the state. One group of peaks, known as the Collegiate Range (Mts. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton) forms a particularly imposing vista from U. S. highway 24 between Trout Creek Pass and Buena Vista. The Independence Pass highway (Colorado 82) between Leadville and Aspen penetrates the heart of the Sawatch high country.
The Sawatch Range as a whole is about 100 miles long (north to south) and 40 miles wide. It is a great faulted [anticline] intruded by [igneous rocks]. The high area north of Leadville shows that the Sawatch and Mosquito Ranges are in reality one huge [dome] with a slight sag in the middle. The ranges, though, are sharply separated topographically by the deep valley of the Arkansas River. Precambrian rocks are near the surface between the ranges, hidden only by a thin cover of stream gravels. Near Leadville, some complexly faulted Paleozoic limestones lie in the sag between the ranges.
At Mt. Princeton Hot Springs there is evidence of repeated faulting and igneous activity. The rocks are strongly altered by hot water coming to the surface through fissures and cracks.
On the west side of the Sawatch range, the old mining towns of Tincup and Aspen grew up where limestone and sandstone layers, broken and crumpled as the Sawatch Range rose, were mineralized by solutions rich in gold and silver. The Aspen Mining District was studied extensively by geologists of the U.S. Geological Survey, and their maps show almost unbelievable complexity in the faulting of the rock layers which exist there.