Erosion
Over the next billion years, the now cooled granite was gradually exposed through erosion of overlying rocks. About 60 million years ago, parts of the Western U.S. were subjected to a series of uplifts, known as the Laramide orogeny, that eventually formed the modern Rocky Mountains and raised Pikes Peak to its current height. Pikes Peak, like other portions of Colorado Rockies is still being uplifted today as a part of larger tectonic processes effecting the Western United States.
Today, the Pikes Peak Batholith and Granite is exposed over a large part of the central Front Range of Colorado. It is found as far north as the southern slopes of Mount Evans west of Denver, west to South Park, and as far south as Cañon City. The batholith is about 80 miles (130 km) long in the north-south direction and about 25 miles (40 km) wide east to west. Even more of it remains hidden underground. Geologists have found the granite at the bottom of deep wells on the plains and magnetic sensors have detected it as much as 80 miles (130 km) to the east.
Read more about this topic: Pikes Peak Granite
Famous quotes containing the word erosion:
“The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but certain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles?... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia: What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable: The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Inter-railers are the ambulatory equivalent of McDonalds, walking testimony to the erosion of French culture.”
—Alice Thompson (b. 1963)