John Day Fossil Beds National Monument

Jill's Journal: A few weeks ago, as we were researching the best way to get from Pendleton or Baker City to the Bend area, we couldn’t help but notice it was a long drive through rugged terrain (no matter which way we went). We had the brilliant idea of breaking up the journey and noticed the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument on the map.

It’s likely John Day never would have been a destination for us otherwise, but we have a certain 7-year-old (7 1/2 now, she would remind us) with a very scientific mind and we decided to go for it (hence the weekend in itty-bitty Dayville). We’re so glad we stopped.

The three main parts of the John Day Fossil Beds are officially 20 square miles. However, the three units are spread far apart and scientific work is done in the whole area, making the Fossil Beds actually encompass 20,000 square miles

We visited the Sheep Rock Unit yesterday, so named because in the 1860s-70s it was found that the near-desert conditions, climate, and terrain in this area were ideal for sheep farming. This is Sheep Rock. It’s quite a lot bigger than it looks in a photograph.

We spent a good amount of time at the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center, which is the park’s visitor center, a fossil museum, and a National Park Service research facility.

The attention span of our two little girls lasted less than eight seconds, but Erika took it all in.

She wanted to read and study everything.

It is so neat to see a budding scientist; she has such a natural interest in anything scientific, whether it be paleontology, archaeology, anatomy and physiology, or so much more.

I thought this guy was happier than the average fossil; he looked like he had a smiley face. Erika was not overly amused by my silliness.

It was as early as the 1860s that Eastern Oregon was first identified as a significant paleontological area. A minister named Thomas Condon (for which the center is named) became interested in the study of ancient life and made several discoveries in the region. Paleontology was a new science at the time. Condon’s findings were important enough that Yale, Princeton, and the Smithsonian Institution began clamoring for his findings. They were soon classifying and presenting fossils from Eastern Oregon to the scientific community.

“Condon believed science was a means to understand the spectacular nature of God’s creation. ‘The hills from which these evidences were taken,’ he wrote in reference to the evolutionary record of the fossil beds, ‘were made by the same God who made the hills of Judea, and the evidences are as authoritative. The Church has nothing to fear from the uncovering of the truth.’” –National Parks Service

Amazingly, hundreds of fossils specimens are still being found each year in John Day.

In the 1920s, Oregon turned portions of the fossil beds into state parks. In 1975, the area was upgraded to a National Monument. These days, one-fifth of Oregon is a fossil bed study area. Wow, huh? Over 45,000 plant and animal fossils have been found here, representing over 2,100 different species. This is the on-site laboratory where everything is processed.

“Under the hills and valleys of Eastern Oregon is one of the richest fossil beds on Earth, an ancient record spanning most of the Age of Mammals.

“...The John Day Fossil Beds expose extraordinarily well preserved specimens. Also remarkable is the great number and variety of fossils: entire communities have been uncovered. There are remnants of past soils, rivers, ponds, mudslides, ashfalls, middens, track-ways, prairies, and forests. This record occurs in an ordered sequence, well interspersed with datable rock layers.

“Science is ongoing here, and the discoveries do more than add to the list of fossils… The John Day Fossil Beds reveals clues to our present and a glimpse of what our future could hold.” –National Parks Service

With the girls groaning and grumbling as they remembered last weekend’s blazing hot, four-mile hike to and back from the ruts made by the Oregon Trail, we set out an another hot hike. This one was called the “Island in Time Trail” and was only 1.2 miles, ascending along the canyon floor of John Day’s Blue Basin. Paleontologists have been collecting fossils here since the late 1800s. It is believed the “arid sagebrush steppe” was at one time a “lush, tropical jungle.” Fossils found here have included sabertooth predators, plus rhinos and elephants.

We did have one knees and hands hiking causality, poor thing. Luckily, Daddy whipped out some handy-dandy Snoopy band-aids.

By the way, we wondered who John Day was and you might too. Interestingly, it is believed he never came within 100 miles of this area. He was a Virginian who joined an expedition in 1810 to establish a fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River. Instead, at the mouth of the Mah-hah River, where it met the Columbia, he was famously robbed by Indians of everything he had (even his clothes). He did escape with his life.

For years, people traveling along the Columbia referred to the mouth of the Mah-hah as the place where John Day was robbed. In the 1850s, the Mah-hah was officially renamed the John Day River since that’s what everyone called it anyway. That same river flows through the John Day Fossil Beds; the fossil beds were given the name of the river.