Welcome to one of Zzzoey's favorite places on EARTH! This tiny town (2000 census had it at a whopping 470 people) in Wheeler County boasts a great old Mercantile, a grand Courthouse, a nearby 6 hole golf course (Kinzua) and last but NOT LEAST, the best public fossil collecting site in the state of Oregon! (that Zzzoey knows of anyway)
In 1949, during construction of the Wheeler County High School, strange rocks were unearthed. The entire hill was composed of what used to be stagnant ponds that collected fallen leaves and other flora, MILLIONS of years ago...and now was layers of shale mudstone with imprints of thousands of leaves from prehistoric times. BONANZA! These are the leaf fossils of the John Day. This is the only PUBLICLY ACKNOWLEDGED place a person like you or me (amateur paleontologists) can actually dig for, crack open and keep fossils without a fee.
The town prides itself on these fossil beds. They ask only that you respect the goings on of the high school, and don't back a truck up, load up and take away the hillside. Please read the sign and follow the directions there.
The cache is not at the fossil beds. We encourage geocachers to take a few moments and explore the beds, and the road up to the high school will be obvious from the cache location. There should be ample parking, please park next to the building and walk across the field. The last thing Zzzoey needs is a call from Wheeler County High School saying geocachers are parking their Jeeps in the baseball diamond.
The best tools Zzzoey has found are: a nice lightweight hammer (tack hammer from a hardware store is good) and a chisel or hard flathead screwdriver. The fossils come in a layered shale rock. The pieces have a *plane* wherein they will cleave open, if given the right tap tap. What Zzzoey does is collects some good looking rocks, finds a nice, level gray rock and sits on the ground. Poising the shale on end and positioning the chisel along the cleaving plane, then tapping gently.. the layers fall apart and leaf fossils are revealed. Be sure and bring a large ziplock bag or a small bucket for your finds. There is no time limit. If you climb the hill you will see where the beds are exposed. One can even find fossils in the "leftovers" going up the hill. People have tossed aside the not-so-great fossil rocks and there are many to be had that require NO work at all.
This is a great experience for the kids, and the big kids like Zzzoe. If the kids get bored, sit on the hill and tell them to run around the perimeter of the field (as illDRIVE did once for/to Zzzoey's nephew) and promise him/her a soda if he does it in such-in-such time... then don't pay attention, but once in a while yell.. oh YOU ARE GONNA BEAT THE RECORD! Oh you BETTER HURRY! until the kids collapse and forget you promised them a soda. Aren't we gonna be GREAT PARENTS SOMEDAY?
The cache is a film canister with a log book and a stubby pencil, but pack a writing implement in your car, as my pencil may have lost its point. Please be discreet. If you need AA batteries, the Mercantile is a stones throw away.
The most common leaf fossil found here (among over 30 known and collected species at this site) is that of the Metasequoia tree (see above photo), a strange evergreen looking tree that loses it's pine-needle like leaves in the fall. Since the discovery of Metasequoia fossils in the New World, an ancient stand of living specimens was discovered in a remote area of China, and since then, the Metasequoia has emerged as a popular landscaping tree the world over. The leaves look like a cross between pine needles and fern leaves.
