The Medicine Bow Mountains are 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, 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 .
16-769: 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 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
32-934: A key problem in such canals is ensuring a sufficient water supply. Important examples are the Chicago Portage , connecting the Great Lakes and Mississippi by the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal , and the Canal des Deux Mers in France, connecting the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The name is enshrined at the Height of Land Portage on the route from the Great Lakes in the Atlantic drainage basin to
48-667: 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. Clark Peak (Medicine Bow Mountains) Clark Peak
64-486: Is the highest point of Jackson County and the entire drainage basin of the North Platte River . This Colorado state location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Drainage divide A drainage divide , water divide , ridgeline , watershed , water parting or height of land is elevated terrain that separates neighboring drainage basins . On rugged land,
80-543: Is the highest summit of the Medicine Bow Mountains range of the Rocky Mountains of North America . The prominent 12,960-foot (3,950 m) peak is located in the Rawah Wilderness of Routt National Forest , 6.3 miles (10.1 km) north-northwest ( bearing 342°) of Cameron Pass , Colorado , United States , on the drainage divide between Jackson and Larimer counties . Clark Peak
96-806: Is the bifurcation of the Orinoco in the north of South America , whose main stream empties into the Caribbean , but which also drains into the South Atlantic via the Casiquiare canal and Amazon River . Since ridgelines are sometimes easy to see and agree about, drainage divides may form natural borders defining political boundaries, as with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in British North America which coincided with
112-529: Is used in Canada and the United States to refer to a drainage divide. It is frequently used in border descriptions, which are set according to the "doctrine of natural boundaries ". In glaciated areas it often refers to a low point on a divide where it is possible to portage a canoe from one river system to another. Drainage divides can be divided into three types: A valley-floor divide occurs on
128-680: The Urstromtäler , for example, between Havel and Finow in the Eberswalde Urstromtal . In marsh deltas such as the Okavango , the largest drainage area on earth, or in large lakes areas, such as the Finnish Lakeland , it is difficult to find a meaningful definition of a watershed. A bifurcation is where the watershed is effectively in a river bed, in a wetland, or underground. The largest watershed of this type
144-746: The Black Sea and the Rienz into the Adriatic . Settlements are often built on valley-floor divides in the Alps. Examples are Eben im Pongau , Kirchberg in Tirol and Waidring (In all of these, the village name indicates the pass and the watershed is even explicitly displayed in the coat of arms). Extremely low divides with heights of less than two metres are found on the North German Plain within
160-886: 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 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
176-647: The 1.78–1.74 billion year old suture between the Wyoming craton and the Yavapai province that formed as North America 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
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#1732773092618192-799: The bottom of a valley and arises as a result of subsequent depositions, such as scree , in a valley through which a river originally flowed continuously. Examples include the Kartitsch Saddle in the Gail valley in East Tyrol , which forms the watershed between the Drau and the Gail, and the divides in the Toblacher Feld between Innichen and Toblach in Italy , where the Drau empties into
208-582: The divide lies along topographical ridges , and may be in the form of a single range of hills or mountains , known as a dividing range . On flat terrain, especially where the ground is marshy , the divide may be difficult to discern. A triple divide is a point, often a summit , where three drainage basins meet. A valley floor divide is a low drainage divide that runs across a valley , sometimes created by deposition or stream capture . Major divides separating rivers that drain to different seas or oceans are continental divides . The term height of land
224-569: 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 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 ,
240-662: The ridgeline of the Appalachian Mountains forming the Eastern Continental Divide that separated settled colonial lands in the east from Indian Territory to the west. Another instance of a border matching a watershed in modern times involves the western border between Labrador and Quebec , as arbitrated by the privy council in 1927. Drainage divides hinder waterway navigation . In pre-industrial times, water divides were crossed at portages . Later, canals connected adjoining drainage basins;
256-868: The streams. A disjunct population of arctic fairy shrimp (Brachinecta paludosa) has been documented in 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
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