Fossils

As like most people I take some joy in finding an interesting rock or stone from time to time. I’ve had some really cool finds over the years.

I was talking with a local archaeologist once about fossils. He told me that one can find fossils of ferns and leaves in a place In Washington County and he told me where the best place to shell fossils in Dried Salmon County was.

Back before there were gates across all the logging roads you could drive up the road to Saddle Mountain and make a right where the Lewis and Clarke Main Line cut across the road. Then about a half mile go right onto another logging road and then right again on to this dead end spur. At the dead end there was a stream that came off the north side of Humbug Mountain. Just down the bank from the dead end and in the stream was the richest fossil bed I had ever seen. It was highly concentrated within less than 100 feet. Outside of that 100 foot area there was nothing but normal stones. Just about every rock held shells of all sorts, even nautilus shells. Some shells even had quartz crystals in them. I took only a few; leaving the millions of others for others to find.

A few years later I was telling someone about this place and decided to take them there. This time there were gates, but it was worth parking and walking in. It took about an hour to get there, but to my extreme dismay the fossil bed had been transformed. We came upon a road where the stream once flowed. The bed was now covered by a culvert pipe and hundreds of yards of pit-run rock. My favorite fossil bed was now a logging road.