Some 300 to 500 million years ago the land began to sink, forming a shallow sea. The Front Range was the shoreline of this ancient sea. Sand, mud, the remains of shells and organic materials were deposited in horizontal layers over the bedrock and hardened into sedimentary rock. When the sinking stopped, the basement rock of granite gneiss began to uplift to form the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. The uplift lasted for 150 million years. The sedimentary layers were broken during the uplift and the edge exposed to the elements. The remnants are the red rocks of the Fountain Formation, the flanks of the Ancestral Rockies, which are locally prominent from Roxborough Park, through Ken-Caryl and South Valley Park, to Red Rocks Amphitheatre.
As the waters receded, deserts covered the region about 280 million years ago, the time of the supercontinent Pangaea. The Lyons Formation of calcite cemented sandstones can be considered as fossilized “sand dunes.” On the eastern slope of the Lyons Formation, in the narrow intermediate valley, are the eroded remains of the shale and limestone Lykins formation, created by the muds and calcium carbonate (lime) that were deposited when the sea returned and the area was a tidal flat. This corresponds to the period of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event 252 million years ago. Scientists estimate that 90 percent of the marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life died out. Possibly 10 million years passed before life on Earth recovered.
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As Pangaea broke apart, the low coastal plain became a riparian paradise for dinosaurs during the time of the Morrison Formation of the late Jurassic period (145 to 165 million years ago). The Morrison Formation, named for the town of Morrison to the north of Ken-Caryl, is notable for the quantity of dinosaur fossils that have been found within its matrix. The great reptiles continued to roam this region for the next few million years until the seas again returned to form the beaches of the Dakota Sandstone, 100 million years ago. Evidence of the dinosaurs walking these ripple marked beaches can be seen along Alameda Parkway as it crosses the Hogback north of the Ranch. The ripple marked beaches and the dinosaur footprints and bones are preserved there in stone at Dinosaur Ridge National Historic site.
The narrow north-south valley, formed at the end of the old uplift period of the Ancient Rockies, lies between the Lyons Formation and the Dakota Hogback. The softer materials of the Lykins and Morrison formations eroded and the lower part of the valley was filled with alluvial materials of a relatively recent (Quarternary, or 2.6 million years ago to the present) age.
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Alluvium filled the valleys, not only between the Lyons and Dakota Hogback, but between the Hogback and the granite mountains, and out east to the plains. Development is founded for the most part on alluvium of the Quaternary period, formed as erosion washed down materials from the uplifted west. Beneath the alluvium to the east, lay shale and coal deposits that were mined near Ken-Caryl in the twentieth century. Perhaps the most significant geologic feature of the eastern plains is the occurrence of swelling soils, which are clays that can swell when exposed to water. The force exerted is enough to cause major damage to roads and buildings. When turned on end, as is the case along the Hogback, the swelling soils are called “heaving bedrock,” and the swelling results in ridges. These ridges are evident along Highway C-470 and on Kipling Parkway in Ken-Caryl, imparting a roller-coaster ride on the drive.
The alluvial fans in the Valley are interrupted by a small ridge or outcrop of gneiss, located to the south of the residential development and west of Mann Reservoir. This was formed by a small wrinkle on the Ken-Caryl Fault that intruded through the sedimentary layers about 70 million years ago.
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