Cretaceous and Tertiary history and resources of the Piceance Creek Basin, western Colorado
— Ronald C. Johnson and C. William Keighin

The Piceance Creek Basin is a Late Cretaceous and Tertiary age sedimentary basin in west-central Colorado. It is bounded on the southeast by the Sawatch uplift, on the east by the White River uplift, on the north by the Uinta uplift, on the southwest by the Uncompahgre uplift, and on the west by the Douglas Creek arch (fig. 1). It is part of a larger complex of Laramide-age basins, including the Uinta Basin to the west and the greater Green River Basin to the north, which hold vast lacustrine oil-shale deposits of Eocene age. This paper is a general overview of the development of the Piceance Creek Basin starting in the Early Cretaceous time. Oil shale, and other resources, are discussed briefly.