Timpas Creek is a stream in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

. There is some uncertainty in the origin of the place name Timpas. The area's first European explorers and settlers were Spanish, then Mexican. ''Timpa'' or ''timpas'' is Spanish for tympstone, the port of a

blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric p ...

from which molten slag drains. Alternatively, ''timpas'' can also be interpreted as "furnace hearth" or any home stone fireplace hearth — of the shaley and marly rocks of the

Colorado Group Colorado is a geologic name applied to certain rocks of Cretaceous age in the North America, particularly in the western Great Plains. This name was originally applied to classify a group of specific marine formations of shale and chalk kno ...

, the locally quarried Timpas Limestone would be the thickest and least unsuitable stone for the job. John Dawson, writing in 1954 in ''Place names in Colorado'', states that the creek was named for the

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

"Timpas Limestone" quarried near the mouth of the creek on to the

Arkansas River The Arkansas River is a major tributary of the Mississippi River. It generally flows to the east and southeast as it traverses the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The river's source basin lies in the western United S ...

, and is still quarried today on the bluffs southeast of Rocky Ford. However,

G.K. Gilbert Grove Karl Gilbert (May 6, 1843 – May 1, 1918), known by the abbreviated name G. K. Gilbert in academic literature, was an American geologist. Biography Gilbert was born in Rochester, New York and graduated from the University of Rochester. D ...

, when reporting on the geology of the Arkansas River in 1896, naming new units to replace the old Benton Shale, acknowledged that the Timpas was already a local name for the limestone outcropping over the bluffs of the creek, suggesting that the limestone was named for the creek. Gilbert recognized that the Timpas Limestone correlated with the Fort Hays Limestone; and, in 1964, the name Timpas Limestone was abandoned, replaced by Fort Hays Limestone.

References

Rivers of Las Animas County, Colorado Rivers of Otero County, Colorado Rivers of Colorado Cretaceous Colorado {{Colorado-river-stub

See also

References