This is Throwback Thursday #341. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks!

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I was looking through some old newsletters looking for interesting bits of ESCONI history and ran across the announcement for the opening of the Fossil & Prairie Park Preserve in Rockford, IA. It opened officially 36 years ago in October 1990.

ROCKFORD FOSSIL AND PRAIRIE AREA

The Rockford Brick and Tile area has been famous for many years. It was written about in books in the 1800’s. Fossils from this area are in museums all around the world. The acquisistion of the land (109 acres) was completed in October, 1990, along with the 47 acres of prairie and farm ground to the West. Floyd County had purchased the Juniper Hill area (30 acres) in 1989. The 47 acres connect the Rockford Brick and Tile area to the Juniper area, making a 147 acre park.

Juniper Hill is one of the only sites where this type of horizontal juniper exists. These three areas will provide the opportunity for an educational complex for the study of geology, prairie, wetlands and the horizontal juniper. The first studies of collections from the Brick and Tile were published in 1858 by renowned paleonto-logist James Hall of Albany, New York, Iowa’s first State Geologist. Fossils from Rockford area are on file in the National Museum of History, Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

Groups that have used the area in the past: University of Northern Iowa, Univ. of Iowa, Illinois State University, University of Wisconsin (Oshkosh), Bradley University of Peoria in Illinois, St. Louis Community College of Missouri, University of Alabama, University of Wisconsin Center-Fox Valley, Albert Lea Public Schools of Minnesota and schools from all over Iowa, and many gem and mineral clubs. These are only a few.

One person wrote, the site is a collectors paradise and a scholars schoolroom. No one can walk in the pits without wondering why the fossils are there or what they are. If totally disinterested in the fossils, they will surely wonder why that nut is standing out in the rain, in sticky clay, picking them up. Where else can a person visit a museum, as the clay pits are, in their own fashion?

Floyd County Conservation, Charles City, IA via Achates, 8/92

Fossils are abundant at the site. This document for teachers and students does and excellent job detailing the history, geology, and the paleontology of the area. It looks like this was a school project by someone named Laura Walter in the Summer of 2015.

Here is a nice brachiopod.

And, horn corals.