Some of the first fossil fish from the Green River Formation were collected by geologist Dr. John Evans in 1856 and described scientifically by Joseph Leidy. Not all early collectors were scientists; Union Pacific Railroad workers discovered the "Petrified Fish Cut" near Rock Springs station in the 1860s. A few years later the railroad was routed near Fossil Butte. Other collectors were men and women - sometimes whole families - fascinated by the fossils they found. Robert Lee Craig, who quarried fish from Fossil Butte and Fossil Ridge to the south, spent 40 years, from 1897 to 1937, quarrying and preparing fish for museums and private collections throughout the world.

David C. Haddenham worked the Fossil Butte sites for more than 50 years in this century. Several families have come to the basin for what has amounted to a life's work for many of them. Many of the countless fossils they dug out and carefully prepared are studied and exhibited today in museums across the United States, including the Field Museum in Chicago, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the University of Wyoming Geological Museum at Laramie, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC The extensive collections reflect the toils of private and scientific collectors of the past 100 years.

Today collecting continues outside the park on private lands and on Wyoming state lands leased by permit only. Rare finds on state lands are turned over to the University of Wyoming for scientific study. Collecting within Fossil Butte National Monument is now limited to special permit research projects that will further scientific understanding of Fossil Lake. Other collecting is disallowed by the Antiquities Act of 1906 that makes it illegal to remove or injure "objects of antiquity" found on federal lands.

Credits and Sources:

“Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming: Geology Fieldnotes,” National Park Service, http://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/fobu/, Accessed June 29, 2015.