is on the right bank of the Yellow River, but not western. At about the Yellow River merges with a right-bank tributary, the Yi Luo. At about the Yi he ("Yi River") to the south and the Luo he ("Luo River") join to form the Yi Luo he. Western Songshan is on the continuous right bank of the Yi and Yiluo, but not directly. A plain separates them through which the streams from Wan'anshan pass in their northward courses. An observer at the confluence of the Yi and the Luo looking south to the Wan'anshan would perceive its general prominence over the plain. The confluence has an elevation of about . The terrain of the mountain due south has an elevation of about at away. The elevation at its foot is about . The observer therefore would see a mountain wall above the horizon rising to over the plain. The slope of the plain would be 130/16 m/km or 0.8125%, scarcely different from flat. Once agricultural, the land is suburban Luoyang today. Natural and cultural assets of the range and its vicinity Geological Three major orogenies formed the area: The Songyang orogeny of 2.5 billion years ago, the Zhongyue orogeny of 1.85 billion years ago, and the Shaolin orogeny of 570 million years ago. They were named after local attractions in the area. The Songshan Geopark is also called “a textbook of geological history”. Mountaineering The high points of the range form a u-shaped divide between the Yellow-River system draining to the NE and the Huai-River system draining to the SE. The concave side of the u faces south. Around it is a half-ring of high-altitude, high-prominence mountains, "sacred" to the ancient religions of China, which were Taoism and Buddhism. Within the u is the Shaoyang Valley, now part of metropolitan Denfeng, which conducts its daily business, so to speak, in the shadow of the mountains. It contains the remains and reconstructions of the ancient religious buildings, once a revolutionary target of the Chinese Communist Party, now supported by them as the basis of hugely profitable geotourism, geosports and geotheatre industries as well as vacation spot for the working people. Ecological Cultural Archaeological Development of the park The first tourist areas The founders of the Republic; i.e., the Nationalist Party, developed a dichotomous policy toward heritage culture. On the one hand it was to be rejected and attacked as "backward."