[2024 Summer Trip] Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, NE

2024/06/07
Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, NE
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Outdoor Activities
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Cook Collection
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Mammal Fossils
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0:31 Visitor Center
2:32 Junior Ranger
2:54 Fossil Hills Trail
9:03 Daemonelix Trail
Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is about 1hour drive north of Scotts Bluff.
The visitor center is small but packed with lots of display.
There are two tipis in front of the visitor center in summer.
The larger tipi with triangle opening is Crow Style, and the smaller one with round opening is Sioux
The monument is comprised of land once owned and ranched by James Cook and the other neighboring ranchers.
The Cook Collection consists of Native American artifacts the Cook family received in the late 1800s and early 1900s from Red Cloud, Chief of the Oglala Lakota, and his people, when they visited James Cook at Agate Springs Ranch. Some were made especially for the Cooks.
It was a 150-mile journey by horse and wagon from the Pine Ridge Reservation. Their friendship, started when James met/spoke with Red Cloud and other Lakota leaders on behalf of Marsh for fossils collection. The friendship last life long
The room is light- and climate-controlled, thus very dimmed, displays many of the most important gifts, which were presented to NPS after James' son Harold passed away in 1960.
The Running Water Winter Count, the chronology of live events portrayed yearly from the birth of Red Cloud in 1872 until the death of James Cook in 1942, was created by Artist Dawn Little Sky.
The ranger told us that the weather forecast a rain at 5pm.
We debated for quite a while as we didn't bring any rain gear for this trip.
There's still lots of day time before sunset, and we didn't have any plans after this,
and honestly it's unlikely we will visit this park again, so we decided to try our luck to hike the paved 2.7-mile Fossil Hills Trail
It does look like a storm is coming and approaching the hills.
On the way we continue to debate whether we should push on and return to avoid catching by the storm … Will the storm come our way?
The trail is quite flat until it reaches the bottom of the hill, when it climbs 250ft to the hills top.
Once at the top, the trail flats and leads to the edge of University Hill and circles around the Carnegie Hill
In between there's a boardwalk to cross a nature wetland area where the Niobrara River flows through. Though it looks like a creek here, it becomes a major recreational river when reaching Valetine, NE, where it is a National Scenic River administered by the NPS
There are abundant Yellow Iris dotted along the river. The Iris were planted by Erwin Barbour at the Agate Springs Ranch near the ranch house and it has since spread down river through the park
Without the clouds it will be very exposed and hot. But it's just about right now - overcast and breeze! Luckily, while we pushed on, the storm is moving toward the other direction
The top of the hills offer a commanding view of the Niobrara Valley, though no fossil displays
It was on the Carnegie hills that James Cook discovered fossilized bones in the mid 1880s.
Excavations didn't commence until a 1904 visit by Olaf Peterson, a paleontologist from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. The American Museum of Natural History, Yale University, and other institutions also worked here between 1904 and 1923.
From these quarries, with all the competitions, paleontologists recovered some of the world's best preserved and most complete fossilized Menoceras, Moropus, and Dinohyus skeletons
I guess this is how these two hills were named.
Then we drove the 3-mile back to the big parking lot at Daemonelix Trailhead and hiked the short 1-mile semi loop.
Ancient sand dune is in view before reaching the loop.
The steeply sloping beds are from the sand cascading down the downwind side, and the gently sloping beds of sand are the preserved windward side of the dune.
The Daemonelix are the distinctive burrows of a small ancient land beaver (Paleocastor) that behaved like modern prairie dogs. They dug 6-8 feet tall corkscrew-shaped entryways to their burrows
Scientists struggled at first to determine how they were made, until Olaf Peterson of the Carnegie Museum found a small rodent skeleton inside one of the corkscrews. After finding other skeletons in similar placements, he theorized these are remains of spiral burrows dug by prehistoric beavers, later filled in with roots, sand and silt.
We spent 3.5 hours here, and then drove to our hotel at Newcastle, WY.
Spiny Phlox 14:12
Loggerhead Shrike 15:25
Lark Sparrow 15:31 15:55
Red-Winged Blackbird 15:37
Western Kingbird 15:41
Eurasian Collared Dove 15:51
Common Nighthawk 16:01
Easter Kingbird 16:17