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| Some of the early fossil hunters and their wares. |
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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 lives work for many of them.
Many of the countless fossils the Ulrich's quarried and carefully prepared are studied and exhibited today in museums across the United States, including the Field Museum in Chicago, the American Museum ot Natural History in New York, the University of Wyoming Geological Museum at Laramie, the Museum of Natural History at Salt Lake City, and the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. 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.
The present Ulrich Quarries originated in 1947 as an avocation of Carl and Shirley Ulrich. Today, the Ulrich Quarries, Preserve and Gallery at Fossil, Wyoming are the full-time responsibilities of the Ulrichs. Here, in these locations, are found some of the most delicate fossil specimens in the world. Once discovered, the fossils are carefully prepared, numbered, cataloged, researched, displayed, signed and ultimately marketed.
These quarries are the original legal commercial sites producing unprepared fossils. The "preparatory" at the Fossil Gallery serves as the center of Carl J. Ulrich’s meticulous hand preparation process. Hours of remarkable dexterity arid accuracy with scribes expose the detailed tossil. Ulrich fossils are the finest in the world, representing a philosophy of creative utilization and preservation of the fossils of fish, plants and other organisms of the Eocene Age in a fresh-water lake system extinct for fifty million years. The fossils are supplied to museums, fine galleries, private collectors and individuals all around the world.
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