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| Tipple at King Mine (Historic Web Picture - Photographer Unknown) |
Hiawatha is a ghost town located about 15 miles south of Price, Utah. When settled, this was a company town that once had a population of over 1500 people. A few of the town improvements can be seen from the road, but the townsite is now fenced because it is on private property.
Elmo (2010 census population 418) is a small farming community with limited services. The town received its name by using the first letter from the last names of the first four families that settled in the area - Erickson, Larsen, Mortensen, and Oviatt.
When I arrived in Elmo I was really amazed at the town's wide streets. The security guard at the dinosaur museum in Price had recommended that I stop in Elmo and visit the Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaur quarry, but when driving through town I did not see the quarry. A woman was working in her front yard, so I stopped and asked her where the quarry was located. Much to my surprise, the lady said that the quarry was not in town, but located 30 miles east from Elmo on a dirt road out in the "middle of nowhere." Since I was driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle, and had almost a full tank of gas, I decided to drive out to the quarry.
Along the way to the "middle of nowhere" I passed a memorial to Winder-Mills family and other families that were part of the Mormon pioneer handcart companies that had settled in the area. In this area, the soil is poor and the vegetation is sparse, so I'm not sure how they made a living.
Continuing down the road I drove by the Desert Lake Waterfowl Manage Area. A sign stated that this was a good place for birding; but the lake was not adjacent to the road, so I did not drive over to the lake. I did, however, find a picture of the lake on the web.
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| Desert Lake (Web Picture by Eric Huish) |
The Quarry's visitor center contains a number of interesting exhibits and explains that "Something unusual happened here!" In other dinosaur quarries around the State, about 90% of the bones discovered are from herbivores and about 10% are from carnivores. However, in this quarry 75% of the bones are from carnivores and only about 25% of the bones are from herbivores. Paleontologist are trying to understand why there were so many carnivores at this location. Even more confusing is that about 50% of all the bones found are from Allosaurus, while the combined other 50% is composed of about 5% each of bones from Stokesosaurus, Glyptops, Stegosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Barosaurus, Camptosaurus, Tervosaurus, Crocodilia, and Camarasaurus. Bones from an Allosaurs look very similar to bones from a Tyrannosaurus.
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| Allosaurus |
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| Camarasaurus |
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| Segosaurus |
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| Diplodocus |
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| Allosaurus |
The quarry is only a short walk from the visitor center and has been enclosed in a large metal building. Many of the bones that have been extracted, or are being extracted, have been labeled to help visitors understand what types of bones they are looking at.
From the visitor center it is possible to hike to the top of Raptor Point, which provides spectacular views of the surrounding area. Along the way there are Pinyon-Juniper trees that rarely grow higher than 15-20 feet tall in this area. The higher you go, the shorter the trees. Also found along the walk are yucca, cacti, rabbitbrush, snakeweed, and a variety of other plants.
The Rock Wall nature trail is about 1.5 miles long and contains markers along the way to explain the geographic features found along the trail.
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| Partial rib of a Sauropod |
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| USGS - 4 section corners marker |
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| Morrison Formation - Primary source for dinosaur bones |
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| Rocks covered with "desert varnish" |
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| A Sauropod was excavated from this knoll - some bone fragments are still visible. |
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| Mound of bentonitic clays |
BONUS HISTORICAL STORIES & PICTURES
One time when I was in grade school we had to make a farm safety poster. Since I was not a very good artist, I had a great idea to just take pictures with Wileta's Kodak. (That's what camera's were called because Kodak made almost all cameras sold in the U.S. Kind of like when people call facial tissues "Kleenex," when Kleenex is just the brand name.)
I decided that my pictures would show safety things that kids should not do around the farm. I recruited my brothers to help me as I posed for the dangerous situations.
We built a raft and floated it on the pond, but the raft was really unstable and kept sinking below the water level. This was the first picture and I entitled it: "Do not play around stock dams."
Since the bulls were in the stock yard, I got up as close as I could for a picture. This picture was entitled: "Do not play around livestock."
For the third picture we raised the Booster-Buck on the Farmall and then got on top of the forks. I thought this would really be a great safety picture because the hydraulic system on the Booster-Buck was unreliable and the forks could fall at any time. If you left the forks in the air at night, the hydraulic fluid would leak past the control valve and the forks would be on the ground in the morning. This picture was entitle "Do not play around farm equipment."
For some reason, the teacher did not like my safety poster!
However, I thought I would make up for it one day in class when we were discussing an article in the Weekly Reader. The article was about how land owners in India would leave some of their crops in the corners of the fields and people that need food could come to the fields after the harvest and gather the remaining corner grains left standing.
Since I had observed that when swathing our grain, the turn angle of the swather was less than the turn angle of the tractor pulling it; thus, there was a small amount of grain left standing in each corner of the field. I told the teacher that we also left grain standing in the corners of our fields, but I had never seen any people that needed food come out and collect the grain.
The teacher thought I was really a weird kid. I think she considered failing me that year!
We built a raft and floated it on the pond, but the raft was really unstable and kept sinking below the water level. This was the first picture and I entitled it: "Do not play around stock dams."
Since the bulls were in the stock yard, I got up as close as I could for a picture. This picture was entitled: "Do not play around livestock."
For the third picture we raised the Booster-Buck on the Farmall and then got on top of the forks. I thought this would really be a great safety picture because the hydraulic system on the Booster-Buck was unreliable and the forks could fall at any time. If you left the forks in the air at night, the hydraulic fluid would leak past the control valve and the forks would be on the ground in the morning. This picture was entitle "Do not play around farm equipment."
For some reason, the teacher did not like my safety poster!
However, I thought I would make up for it one day in class when we were discussing an article in the Weekly Reader. The article was about how land owners in India would leave some of their crops in the corners of the fields and people that need food could come to the fields after the harvest and gather the remaining corner grains left standing.
Since I had observed that when swathing our grain, the turn angle of the swather was less than the turn angle of the tractor pulling it; thus, there was a small amount of grain left standing in each corner of the field. I told the teacher that we also left grain standing in the corners of our fields, but I had never seen any people that needed food come out and collect the grain.
The teacher thought I was really a weird kid. I think she considered failing me that year!
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