The Forms and Processes of Garden of the Gods

The rocks at the Garden, each one unique in its own way, get you to question how they were formed in the first place. At first the tall straight and skinny rocks hint at a dyke that had the soil around it slowly eroded away. However, all these rocks that jet into the air are all intrusive sedimentary rocks. While it is still weathering and erosion that uncovered them, they are not formed by volcanic activity.

The intrusive sedimentary rocks of the Garden

Aging of the rocks hints at the age of around 300 million years, around the time of the dinosaurs. Pikes peak, the mountain closest and most related with the park is almost completely ganite and dates back nearly 1.6 billion years. This means that these formations were formed in a period well after the ancestral rockies. Many fossils of dinosars and other specimines have been found all around the park also hinting at the age. Because of this I hypothesize that glaciers from the precambrian sea that stretched directly through this area helped in the creation and erosion of what we see today.

Pike's Peak rising ominously behing the rocks of the park

Pikes Peak, being made at a different time, was made in a completely different fashion. Unlike the rocks in the garden, Pike's is made up of granite, an intrusive igneous rock. This whole area has been greatly effected by faulting. Taking a look at this picture it becomes more evident...

Many straight lines in pattern indicates faulting

The most aparent feature on this map is the graben that has formed due to the extension fault just east of the main line of the rocks that give this garden its name. The top (most north part) of this wall of rocks is marked by the small red dot. Just to the east of this line there is a noticable small valley just before the land rises back up. The graben is not the only evidence of faulting. Even smaller faults on the rocks themselves often give them their unique shape.

Gateway rock with the plaque that shows the day the garden was given to Colo. Springs

Here on Gateway Rock there is a fault or area where the rock has broken. The crack stretches down just to the right of the plaque. It is smaller faults like this that give the rock their unique shapes.