This is Mazon Monday post #232.  What’s your favorite Mazon Creek fossil?  Tell us at email:esconi.info@gmail.com.

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On September 27th, 1959, ESCONI sponsored the Annual Autumn Braidwood Field Trip.   These trips were held each year many times with the different Chicago clubs rotating as hosts.  John and Lucy McLuckie were on hand every year.  Sometimes, the particpants gathered at their house after a day of collecting on the spoil piles.

The announcement appeared in the September newsletter and was written by Dick Ade, who was Field Trip Chairman at the time.

We have photos from some of these field trips in the ESCONI archives.   These old photos feature interesting cars and bare spoil pile hills.  The spoil piles were relatively fresh as strip mining started in the 1920s and some were active until the mid-1970s. 

Meeting at a gas station in Braidwood, IL

Braidwood area in 1959

Check out those cars!

Visiting with members of other clubs

Jay Farr’s car.  Jay was the second Chairman of ESCONI.

Allaways and Witmers… most of those people are not dressed for fossil hunting as we know it!  Note the large spoil pile in the background.

Howard and Olive Knight

Jay Farr, Carl Lerstrom, and unknown member

Dick Ade on the table with John McLuckie, Howard Knight, and others

Lucy McLuckie, Edith Schwendemann, and others

Lunch time

More spoil piles… wouldn’t you love to walk them?!?

Climbing the piles…