Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming
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Description
About Fossil Butte National Monument:
Plan Your Visit
Southwest Wyoming offers two seasons: summer and winter. To participate in ranger-led activities, schedule your visit between the Memorial and Labor Day holiday weekends. Allow all day to fully explore the park.
Fossil Butte National Monument is located between 6,800 and 8100 feet elevation in the sagebrush covered hills of rural, southwestern Wyoming. Wide open spaces, fresh air, blue skies, abundant wildlife and, of course, some of the most incredible fossils in the world are found here.
Directions
Forty-five miles north of Interstate 80, Kemmerer, Wyoming is at the crossroads of U.S. Highways 189 and 30. The monument is 9 miles west of Kemmerer on U.S. Highway 30. Follow the signs to the visitor center.
Commercial transportation or tour buses are not available. The monument is a 2.5 hour drive from Salt Lake City International Airport.
Operating Hours & Seasons
The visitor center is open 7 days a week 8:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend. September through May, the visitor center is open 8:00 a.m.– 4:30 p.m., 7 days a week, but clo
Wikipedia Description
About Fossil Butte National Monument:
Fossil Butte National Monument is a unit of the National Park Service located 15 miles west of Kemmerer, Wyoming; the national monument was established on October 23, 1972. The site preserves the best paleontological record of Tertiary aquatic communities in North America and possibly the world, within the 50-million-year-old Green River lake beds. Fossils preserved, including fish, alligators, bats, turtles, dog-sized horses, insects, and many other species of plants and animals suggest that the region was a low, subtropical, freshwater basin when the sediments accumulated, over about a 2 million-year period.
Coal mining for the railroad led to the settlement of the nearby town of Fossil, Wyoming, now a ghost town. When the fossils were discovered, miners dug them up to sell to collectors. In particular, Lee Craig sold fossils from 1897 to 1937. Commercial fossil collecting is not allowed within the National Monument, but numerous quarries on private land nearby continue to produce
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