The American Museum Of Natural History


1903 Eocene of Wyoming

The three weeks work spent in the Bridger Basin in August, 1902 by W. D. Matthew and Walter Granger on preliminary geological work for USGS, disclosed the fact that despite repeated collecting by various parties for over 30 years, there remained enough left for at least one more good field season. The 1903 party consisted of Mr. Granger, in charge, Mr. Albert Thomson and Mr. L. S. Quackenbush, a volunteer. Dr. O. P. Hay joined the party in the later part of June and remained for six weeks, his time being spent entirely on fossil turtle collecting. Prof. Osborn joined the party for three days in August, and at this time Mr. Thomson was transferred to Prof. Osborn's private party in the Uinta Mountains.

Granger and Thomson left NY on May 9th, arriving in Fort Bridger on the 14th where they were joined by Mr. Quackenbush. A complete outfit was purchased at Evanston and Mr. John Backstrom was hired as teamster. Owing to inclement weather the expedition was unable to move before May 24th, when it proceeded to Smith's Fork, near Mountain View Post Office. Here the first collecting was done, and a couple days later a camp was established on Little Dry Creek opposite what is know as "Leavitt's Slide". Little was found along Leavitt Creek Valley, but did explore the extensive badland pocket a mile North, a part of Grizzly Buttes. For sake of connivance for recording localities the bluff was divide into East and West, the Henry's Fork road being the diving line. The pocket located just North of the Leavitt's Creek camp provided to be the richest in fossils of any locality visited. Fully half of the collection this season was made here. We spent June 12th to July 14th here. The party then moved down Smith's Fork to the eastern end of Grizzly Buttes. Two weeks were spent with good results. The camp was then moved to the mouth of Cottonwood Creek (Aug. 1st to 7th), thence to Millersville (Aug. 8th to 12th), Cottonwood Corral (Aug. 13th to Aug. 23rd) and finally to Church Buttes (Aug. 24th to Aug. 28th). From each of these camps we explored as far as possible. Returning to Fort Bridger the party proceeded to Henry's Fork, where camp was made at the ranch of Mr. William Summers on August 31st. At he end of September the outfit was returned to Fort Bridger. Twenty three boxes of about 3 tons in weight were shipped and the party was disbanded. There were 500 recorded specimens with about 150 being reptile, mostly turtles.

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See also 1903 Annual Report

Matthew and Granger's 1902-1904 Notebook