Centennial (8 page)

But it was still the river which determined what the surface of the land would be, and starting eight million years ago, it once more began to tumble out of the mountains with greatly increased velocity, cutting and swirling and spreading far across the plains. It was engaged upon a gargantuan task, to scour away every vestige of the enormous quantity of land that had been contributed by the New Rockies. In some places it had to remove up to a thousand feet of burden; from extensive areas it had to cut away at least three hundred feet. But it succeeded ... except where that extra-hard caprock protected its monolith.

No matter how wild the torrents that raged down from the mountains, nor how compulsive the flash floods that cascaded across the plain after some torrential downpour, the monolith persisted. It covered an area no more than a quarter of a mile long, two hundred yards wide, but it resisted all assaults of the river. For millions of years this strange and solitary monolith maintained its integrity.

Neighboring sandstone covers were breached, and when they were gone, the softer areas they had protected were easily cut down by the river. Winds helped; meltwater from ice did its damage; and as the eons passed, the river completed its task: all remnants of land deposited by the New Rockies were swept away, except the solitary monolith.

And then, about two million years ago, the central portion of the caprock weakened, cracked during a heavy winter, and broke away. The softer rock which it had been protecting quickly deteriorated—say, over a period of two hundred thousand years—until it was gone.

Two pillars remained, about a quarter of a mile apart, each somewhat elongated in shape; the western was over five hundred feet long and two hundred feet wide, the eastern only three hundred and eighty feet long and a hundred and ninety wide. The western pillar was taller, too, standing three hundred and twenty feet above its pediment; the eastern, only two hundred and eighty.

They were extraordinary, these two sentinels of the plains. Visible for miles in each direction, they guarded a bleak and silent empire. They were the only remaining relics of that vast plain which the New Rockies had deposited; each bit of land the sentinels surveyed dated back to ancient times before the mountains were born.

The fourth special place is rather embarrassing to mention, after this parade of fractured cliffs, valleys packed with gold and high monuments of integrity; but eleven thousand years ago, when the main features of the New Rocky Mountain area had long been determined and the land looked pretty much as it looks today, a small, wandering muddy stream joined the river at the spot where Centennial was to be. It came in from the north and in its day must have been a helpful agent to the parent river in scouring off the debris sent down by the mountains. Now it was a miserable thing, carrying little water and serving more as a drainage ditch than a rivulet.

But along its western bank, not far from where it joined the river, its probing fingers had recently penetrated into a pocket of soluble stone lying some seven feet below the surface of the land. It formed a secret cave less than six feet long and only four feet wide. It would scarcely have been noticed except for a dramatic event which would occur in relation to it eleven thousand years after its creation by the meandering stream.

And so the stage is set. One billion, seven hundred million years of activity, including the building of at least two high mountain ranges and the calling into being of vast seas, have produced a land which is ready to receive living things.

It is not a hospitable land, like that farther east in Kansas or back near the Appalachians. It is mean and gravelly and hard to work. It lacks an adequate topsoil for plowing. It is devoid of trees or easy shelter. A family could wander this land for weeks and never find enough wood to build a house.

It lacks water—my God, how it lacks water. Rainfall at Centennial is only thirteen inches a year, when any farmer knows that to produce even miserly corn or wheat requires twenty-one. The extremes of temperature can be unbearable, from one hundred and nine in August to thirty-eight below in February.

It is a land subject to wild whims of nature. Sometimes a score of years will pass with almost no rain, so that crops perish and organized society stands in peril. At sixty- or seventy-year intervals unpredictable winds whip over the prairies, exhausting the land and everything that grows upon it. Duststorms greater than hurricanes and more persistent can sweep the region for months on end, filling all openings with grit. And as if this were not enough, at unexpected times and for unexplained reasons gigantic swarms of locusts can suddenly emerge from the west and darken the sky for three or four days running. They swarm in the air, more extensive than storm clouds, and capriciously they alight, eating every green thing that stands in their path. Then they rise and fly mysteriously on, landing and eating a few more times, then vanishing as inexplicably as they appeared.

But there is one thing about this land. Theoretically, it can be farmed. It is rich in minerals. It is the inheritor of two great mountain ranges; over several hundred million years it conserved deposits sent down by the mountains and is entitled to the richness it possesses. The growing season is adequate for most crops: late frost on May 10, first frost on September 27, with an average 139 frost-free days in between for the prudent farmer. The governing rule is simple.

“If you can lead water onto this land, you can grow anything.”

“Well, you wouldn’t try apples or oranges, would you?”

“No, but only because they can be grown better somewhere else.”

Corn and wheat? Magnificent. Sorghum? The best. Garden vegetables? None better.

“Like I said, you can grow anything. But two things grow better here than anywhere else on earth.”

“Such as?”

“Melons of any kind. You name it. And great big juicy sugar beets.”

The land cries for water. The bleakest desert, even the forbidding land about the two pillars, will flourish like a garden if only water can be got to it. Consequently, the crucial problem of this area will be the attempt of man to lead water onto his intractable land. If he can do that, if only he can do that, he will have at his disposal a paradise.

And finally there is the river, a sad, bewildered nothing of a river. It carries no great amount of water, and when it has some it is uncertain where it wants to take it. No ship can navigate it, nor even a canoe, with reasonable assurance. It is the butt of more jokes than any other river on earth, and the greatest joke is to call it a river at all. It’s a sand bottom, a wandering afterthought, a useless irritation, a frustration, and when you’ve said all that, it suddenly rises up, spreads out to a mile wide, engulfs your crops and lays waste your farms.

Its name is as flat as its appearance, the South Platte, yet for a while it was the highway of empire. It was the course of stirring adventure and the means whereby the adventurers lived. Once mighty enough to help build a continent, it is now a mean, pestiferous bother.

“I swear to God, sometimes you can tell where that damned river is only by spotting cottonwoods that line its bank.”

“You’re right, and those useless trees drink far more of the water than they’re entitled to.”

CAUTION TO
US
EDITORS. Last April, when we started this project, I half warned you on the telephone that my investigations might wander somewhat far afield. But “I could not imagine how provocative the history of this little town would prove to be, how involved I would become with the land, the animals, the people. And certainly I did not anticipate that to report to you properly, I would need to start with the origin of the earth.

When you face the problem of dating that origin, you will have to bite the bullet. What I have given you is based upon an earth age of 4,750,000,000 years plus or minus 50,000,000. This is the latest specific estimate I have been able to uncover and is based upon the summary studies of G.R. Tilton and R.H. Steiger, who did analytic work on the Canadian Shield, using lead isotopes.

I have consulted with the leading scientists at Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State and Colorado University and they tend toward a somewhat lesser age. You would not be far wrong if you used 4,600,000,000. You may find it useful to have the principal historical estimates:

Year
Authority
Proposed Origin of Earth

1642 John Lightfoot,
9:00 A.M., September 17,

professor of Greek
3928 B.
C
.

1658 James Ussher, archbishop
October 23, 4004 B.C.

1860 John Phillips
96,000,000 BPE

1869 Thomas Huxley
100,000,000

1892 T. L. Wallace
28,000,000

1892 Sir Archibald Geikie
680,000,000

1897 Jacob Johannes Sederholm 40,000,000

1897 Lord Kelvin
40,000,000

1899 John Joly
100,000,000

1907 B. B. Boltwood
1,640,000,000

1917 Joseph Barrell
1,600,000,000

1947 Arthur Homes
3,000,000,000

1956 C. C. Patterson
4,550,000,000

1960 Tilton and Steiger
4,750,000,000
±
50,000,000

My own educated guess is that before long we may be tending toward some date like six billion years, but I would not recommend that you stick your neck out in that direction till more studies are in. My figures will prove consistent if you settle upon Tilton and Steiger’s 4,750,000,000, which is supported by recent moon data.

As to my datings of classical geologic periods, I have followed the most conservative and generally agreed-upon dates. You should have no trouble with these, as scientists the world over agree generally as to relative datings. There are discrepancies. Ogden Tweto, the foremost expert on the Laramide orogeny, believes the New Rockies began to emerge 72,000,000 years ago, with the process terminating about 43,000,000 years ago. Others have preferred beginning dates like 80,000,000 to 65,000,000 and terminal dates as late as 39,000,000.

But as to the specific relationships between the geological eras, systems and series, there can be no logical protest. The Silurian period follows the Ordovician, and the Miocene epoch follows the Oligocene as surely as Wednesday follows Tuesday. What the precise length of each unit was, and when the whole began, we cannot say with certainty, but we can be absolutely sure of the relative relationships.

It is precisely as if, in the distant future when written records have been lost, scientists want to determine when American constitutional government began. All they have to work on is a marble plaque giving the names of the first sixteen Presidents, the fact that Lincoln ended his term in 1865, and the law that a President was elected for a term of four years.

Washington
Harrison

Adams
Tyler

Jefferson
Polk

Madison
Taylor

Monroe
Fillmore

Adams
Pierce

Jackson
Buchanan

Van Buren
Lincoln

Using these data, the scientists would multiply sixteen by four and subtract that number from 1865; they would thus deduce that our nation started in 1801, which is too late.

Then let us suppose that one clever scientist discovers that Jefferson, Madison and Monroe each served eight years. He might conclude that all did and decide that the nation started in 1737, which is too early.

Let us now suppose that another scholar finds that the two generals, Harrison and Taylor, died shortly after being elected and should therefore not count in the series. There would thus be only fourteen Presidents, each serving eight years, which would give a starting date of 1773, which is better but not yet close to the true date, which was 1789. However, regardless of the misconceptions of the scientists as they work their way through the data, they do have the proper sequence, and they are refining their judgments. American constitutional democracy started sometime around the end of the eighteenth century and could not possibly have started at the end of the seventeenth.

The Appalachians were incontrovertibly old when the New Rockies emerged; the central part of our nation did lie submerged beneath a great sea for millions of years; and volcanoes in southeastern Colorado did produce rocks aggregating some fourteen thousand cubic miles. On these established matters we can expect future refinements of judgment. But not reversal. The land at Centennial developed pretty much as stated.

Any segment of land—the moon, for example—can be interesting of itself, but its greater significance must always lie in the life it sustains.

Toward dusk on a spring evening one hundred and thirty-six million years ago a small furry animal less than four inches long peered cautiously from low reeds which grew along the edge of a tropical lagoon that covered much of what was to be Colorado. It was looking across the surface of the water as if waiting for some creature to emerge from the depths, but nothing stirred.

From among the fern trees to the left there was movement, and for one brief instant the little animal looked in that direction. Shoving its way beneath the drooping branches and making considerable noise as it awkwardly approached the lagoon for a drink of water, came a medium-sized dinosaur, walking on two legs and twisting its short neck from side to side, as if on the watch for larger animals that might attack.

It was about three feet tall at the shoulders and not more than six feet in length. Obviously a land animal, it edged up to the water carefully, constantly jerking its short neck in probing motions. In paying so much attention to the possible dangers on land, it overlooked the real danger that waited in the water, for as it reached the lagoon and began lowering the forepart of its body so that it could drink, a fallen log which had lain inconspicuously half in the water, half out sprang into action.

It was a crocodile, well armored in heavy skin and possessed of powerful jaws lined with piercing teeth. It made a lunge at the drinking dinosaur, but it had moved too soon. Its well-calculated grab at the reptile’s right foreleg missed by a fraction, for the dinosaur managed to withdraw so speedily that the great snapping jaw closed not on the bony leg, as intended, but only upon the soft flesh covering it.

There was a ripping sound as the crocodile tore off a strip of flesh, and a sharp guttural click as the wounded dinosaur responded to the pain. Then peace returned. The dinosaur could be heard for some moments retreating. The disappointed crocodile swallowed the meager meal it had caught, then returned to its log-like camouflage, and the furry little animal returned to its earlier preoccupation of staring at the surface of the lagoon.

Its attention was poorly directed, for as it watched, it became aware, with a sense of terrible panic, of wings in the darkening sky, and at the very last moment of safety it threw itself behind the trunk of a ginkgo tree, flattened itself out, and held its breath as a large flying reptile swooped down, its gaping, sharp-toothed mouth open, and just missed its target.

Still flat against the moist earth, the little animal watched in terror as the huge reptile banked low over the lagoon and returned in what under other circumstances might have been a beautiful flight. This time it came straight at the crouching animal, but then, abruptly, had to swerve away because of the ginkgo roots. Dipping one wing, it turned gracefully in the air, then swooped down on another small creature hiding near the crocodile, unprotected by any tree.

Deftly the flying reptile snapped its beak and caught its prey, which uttered high shrieks as it was carried aloft. For some moments the little animal hiding in the ginkgo watched the flight of its enemy as the reptile dipped and swerved through the sky like a falling feather, finally vanishing with its catch.

The little watcher could breathe again. It was unlike the great reptiles, for they were cold-blooded and it was warm. They raised their babies from hatching eggs, while its came from the mother’s womb. It was a pantothere, one of the earliest mammals and progenitor of later types like the opossum, and it had scant protection in the swamp. Watching cautiously lest the flying hunter return, it ventured forth to renew its inspection of the lagoon, and after a pause, spotted what it had been looking for.

About ninety feet out into the water a small knob had appeared on the surface. It was only slightly larger than the watching animal itself, about six inches in diameter. It seemed to be floating on the surface, unattached to anything, but actually it was the unusual nose of an animal that had its nostrils on top of its head. The beast was resting on the bottom of the lagoon and breathing in this inventive manner.

Now, as the watching animal expected, the floating knob began slowly to emerge from the waters. It was attached to a head, not extraordinarily large but belonging obviously to an animal markedly bigger than either the first dinosaur or the crocodile. It was not a handsome head, nor graceful either, but what happened next displayed each of those attributes.

For the head continued to rise from the lagoon, higher and higher and higher in one long beautiful arch, until it stood twenty-five feet above the water, suspended at the end of a long and most graceful neck. It was like a ball extended endlessly upward on a frail length of wire, and when it was fully aloft, with no body visible to support it, the head turned this way and that in delicate motion, as if surveying the total world that lay below.

The small head and enormous neck remained in this position for some minutes, sweeping in lovely arcs of exploration. Apparently the small eyes which stood on either side of the projecting nose at the top of the skull were reassured by what they saw, for now a new kind of motion ensued.

From the surface of the lake an enormous construction began slowly to appear, an inch at a time, muddy waters falling from it as it rose. Slowly, slowly the thing in the lagoon came into view, until it disclosed a monstrous prism of dark flesh to which the prehensile neck was attached.

The body of the great reptile looked as if it were about twelve feet tall, but how far into the water it extended could not be discerned; it surely went very deep. Now, as the furry animal on shore watched, the massive body began to move, slowly and rhythmically. Where the neck joined the great dark bulk of the body, little waves broke and slid along the flanks of the beast. Water dripped from the upper part of the body as it moved ponderously through the swamp.

The reptile appeared to be swimming, its neck probing in sweeping arcs, but actually it was walking on the bottom, its huge legs hidden by water. And then, as it drew closer to shore and entered shallower water, there occurred a moment of marked grace and beauty. From the water trailing behind the animal, an enormous tail emerged. Longer than the neck and disposed in more delicate lines, it extended forty-four feet, swaying slightly on the surface of the lagoon. From head to tip of tail, the reptile measured eighty-seven feet.

Up to now it had looked like a long snake, floundering through the lagoon, but the truth was about to be revealed, for as the reptile advanced, the massive legs which had been supporting it became visible. They were enormous, four pillars of great solidity attached to the torso by joints of such crude construction that although the creature was amphibious, she could not easily support herself on dry land, where water did not buoy her up.

With slow, lumbering strides the reptile moved toward a clear river that emptied into the swamp, and now its total form was visible. Its head reared thirty-five feet; its shoulders were thirteen feet high; its tail dragged aft some fifty feet; it weighed nearly thirty tons.

It was diplodocus, not the largest of the dinosaurs and certainly not the most fearsome. This particular specimen was a female, seventy years old and in the prime of life. She lived exclusively on vegetation, which she now sought among the swamp waters. Moving her small head purposefully from one kind of plant to the next, she cropped off such food as she could find. This was not an easy task, for she had an extremely small mouth studded with minute peg-like front teeth and no back ones for chewing. It seems incomprehensible that with such trivial teeth she could crop enough food to nourish her enormous body, but she did. It was this problem of chewing that had brought her toward the shore, this and one other strange impetus that she could not yet identify. She attended first to the chewing.

After finishing with such plants as were at hand, she moved into the channel. The mammal, still crouching among the roots of the ginkgo tree, watched with satisfaction as she moved past. It had been afraid that she might plant one of her massive feet on its nest, as another dinosaur had done, obliterating both the nest and its young. Indeed, diplodocus left underwater footprints so wide and so deep that fish used them as nests. One massive footprint might be many times as wide as the mammal was long.

And so diplodocus moved away from the lagoon and the apprehensive watcher. As she went she was one of the most totally lovely creatures so far seen on earth, a perfect poem of motion. Placing each foot carefully and without haste, and assuring herself that at least two were planted solidly on the bottom at all times, she moved like some animated mountain, keeping the main bulk of her body always at the same level, while her graceful neck swayed gently and her extremely long tail remained floating on the surface.

The various motions of her great body were always harmonious; even the plodding of the four gigantic feet had a captivating rhythm. But when the undulating grace of the long neck and the longer tail was added, this large reptile epitomized the beauty of the animal kingdom as it then existed.

She was looking for a stone. For some time she had instinctively known that she lacked a major stone, and this distressed her. She had become agitated about the missing stone and now proposed settling the matter. Keeping her head low, she scanned the bottom of the stream but found no suitable stones.

This forced her to move upstream, the delicate motion of her body conforming to the shifting bottom as it rose slightly before her. Now she came upon a wide selection of stones, but prudence warned her that they were too jagged for her purpose, and she ignored them. Once she stopped, turned a stone over with her blunt nose and scorned it. Too many cutting edges.

Her futile search made her irritable and she failed to notice the approach of a rather large land-based dinosaur that walked on two legs. He did not come close to approaching her in size, but he was quicker of motion, and had a large head, gaping mouth and a ferocious complement of jagged teeth. He was a meat-eater, always on the watch for the giant water-based dinosaurs who ventured too close to land. He was not large enough to tackle a huge animal like diplodocus if she was in her own element, but he had found that usually when the large reptiles came into the stream, there was something wrong with them, and twice he had been able to hack one down.

He approached diplodocus from the side, stepping gingerly on his two powerful hind feet, keeping his two small front feet ready like hands to grasp her should she prove to be in weakened condition. He was careful to keep clear of her tail, for this was her only weapon.

She remained unaware of her would-be attacker, and continued to probe the river bottom for the right stone. The carnivorous dinosaur interpreted her lowered head as a sign of weakness. He lunged at the spot where her vulnerable neck joined the torso, only to find that she was in no way incapacitated, for when she saw him coming she twisted adroitly, and presented the attacker with the broad and heavy side of her body. This repulsed him, and he stumbled back. As he did so, diplodocus stepped forward, and slowly swung her tail in a mighty arc, hitting him with such force that he was thrown off his feet and sent crashing into the brush.

One of his small front feet was broken by the blow and he uttered a series of
awk-awks
, deep in his throat, as he shuffled off. Diplodocus gave him no more attention and resumed her search for the right stone.

Finally she found what she wanted. It weighed about three pounds, was flattish on the ends and both smooth and rounded. She nudged it twice with her snout, satisfied herself that it was suited to her purposes, then lifted it in her mouth, raised her head to its full majestic height, swallowed the stone and allowed it to slide easily down her long neck into her gullet and from there into her grinding gizzard, where it joined six smaller stones that rubbed together gently and incessantly as she moved. This was how she chewed her food, the seven stones serving as substitutes for the molars she lacked.

With awkward yet attractive motions she adjusted herself to the new stone, and could feel it find its place among the others. She felt better all over and hunched her shoulders, then twisted her hips and flexed her long tail.

Night was closing in. The attack by the smaller dinosaur reminded her that she ought to be heading back toward the safety of the lagoon, back where fourteen other reptiles formed a protective herd, but she was kept in the river by a vague longing which she had experienced several times before, but which she could not remember clearly. She had, like all members of the diplodocus family, an extremely small brain, barely large enough to send signals to the various remote parts of her body. For example, to activate her tail became a major tactical problem, for any signal originating in her distant head required some time to reach the effective muscles of the tail. It was the same with the ponderous legs; they could not be called into instant action.

Her brain was too small and too undifferentiated to permit reasoning or memory; habit ingrained warned her of danger, and only the instinctive use of her tail protected her from the kind of assault she had just experienced. As for explaining in specific terms the gnawing agitation she now felt, and which had been the major reason for her leaving the safety of the herd, her small brain could give her no help.

She therefore walked with splashing grace toward a spot some distance upstream. How beautiful she was as she moved through the growing darkness! All parts of her great body seemed to relate to one central impulse, gently twisting neck stalwart central structure, slow-moving mighty legs and delicate tail extending almost endlessly behind and balancing the whole. It would require far more than a hundred million years of experiment before her equal would be seen again.