WSP11312

• File Number: 7630.275
• Description: Wild and Scenic-Flat Tops Wilderness Area
• State: CO
• Date: 1/1/3000
• Author: USFS
• Title: Flat Tops Wilderness Area-A Proposal Flat Tops Wilderness-White River and Routt National Forests-Colorado
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

The allowable annual timber cut, as presently determined, would not be reduced on
the Routt and White River National Forests.

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tions consists primarily of dead spruce stands. Site quality in the proposed additions is
somewhat higher than most of the present primitive area, since the additions are gener-
ally below the escarpments in the better timber-growing sites.

The proposed 21,451-acre addition at the head of the East Fork Williams Fork River
is forested with both noncommercial aspen stands and dead spruce stands similar to
other portions of the Fiat Tops.

Minerals

There is no history of mining or mineral lease activities within the proposed Wilder-
ness. There are no mineral patents or known recorded mining claims.

Field investigation of the proposed Wilderness was conducted by the U. S. Geologi-
cal Survey and the Bureau of Mines, Department of the Interior, during the summer of
1965. The combined report of the two bureaus is published as Geological Survey Bul-
letin 1230-C, Mineral Resources of the Fiat Tops Primitive Area, Colorado. These two
bureaus have authorized the following report summary:

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"The Fiat Tops Primitive Area is in northwest Colorado, in Garfield, Eagle, and
Rio Blanco Counties. For purposes of this report, it is divided into two parts (1) the
South Fork area, drained by the South Fork of the White River, and (2) the Pyra-
mid area, in the northern part of the Primitive Area, where Pyramid Peak is a
prominent landmark.

Rocks in the Fiat Tops range in age from Precambrian to Quaternary. The South
Fork area is part of a large structural dome of Precambrian crystalline rocks with a
relatively thin cover of Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. It is capped by extensive ba-
salt flows that form a broad, fairly level plateau. Remnants of basalt flows fonn
high peaks and steep ridges in the Pyramid area.

The Primitive Area is about 50 miles northwest of the belt of mineral deposits
that has produced most of the mineral wealth of Colorado. No prospects were lo-
cated or worked in the Primitive Area during the early period of prospecting. The
"Dade prospect" was staked in 1940, near the southern border. It contains iron and
lead sulfides, but the vein is not considered large or rich enough to be worth mining.
A so-called gold prospect was investigated by the Bureau of Mines but was found
to be only an area of iron-stained and barren basalt.

Basalt of the kind forming the extensive caprock of the area is generally barren
of mineral deposits in Colorado. In contrast, the Leadville Limestone, which lies
below the basalt over a wide area, is an especially favorable host rock for mineral
deposits in Colorado. Consequently, sampling was concentrated at the periphery of
the basalt caprock, and hundreds of stream and soil samples were collected in the
canyons and gullies that contain the Leadville and other sedimentary rocks in the
search for concentration of valuable minerals. These samples were analyzed by
chemical and spectrographic methods that permitted detection of minute amounts of
metals. A few localities were found to contain metallic concentrations somewhat