Colorado Piedmont

The Colorado Piedmont is an area along the base of the foothills of the Front Range in north central Colorado in the United States. The region consists of a broad hilly valley, just under 5000 ft (1500 m) in elevation, stretching north and northeast from Denver in the valley of the South Platte River, as well as along the Arkansas River valley southward from Colorado Springs. The name Colorado Piedmont also refers to the physiographic section of the Great Plains province.^{[citation needed]}

Description

The Colorado Piedmont elevation is lower than the foothills, but is also slightly lower elevation than the

shallow sea covered present-day Colorado. It was during this time that the South Platte River, which had previously flowed eastward across the Plains, rerouted northward along the mountains to join the Cache la Poudre River. In some areas of the Piedmont, a loose veneer of Pleistocene gravel overlays older shale and which accumulated during glaciation in the mountains, when streams descending onto the Piedmont became overburdened with sediment.^{[citation needed}

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The drop off from the Plains to the Piedmont is noticeable to motorists driving southward from Cheyenne, Wyoming on Interstate 25. At approximately Mile 293 northeast of Wellington, Colorado, near the Larimer-Weld county line, the road drops noticeably from the Upper Cretaceous sandstone of the Plains to the lower shale of the Piedmont. The transition from High Plains to Piedmont is likewise accompanied by a change in agriculture, from pasture lands on the Plains to cultivated fields in the Piedmont.^{[citation needed]}

In the 19th century, the Piedmont region was inhabited primarily by the

Colorado-Big Thompson Project, also supply needed water to the region.^{[citation needed}

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Colorado Piedmont

Description

References

Further reading