HUNTING FOSSILS ON THE OLD OREGON TRAIL 



By J. W. GIDLEY, 

 Assistant Curator of J\lainiiialia)i Fossils, U. S. National Museum 



Many a thrilling tale of adventure and hardship has been told by the 

 pioneers who traveled the Old Orgeon trail to the northwest in the 

 early settlement of what was at that time wild, savage-infested coun- 

 try. Even today, especially along the Snake River Valley in Idaho, 

 there remain abundant traces not only of the old trail itself but some 

 of the tragedies that took place along its path as it wound its way 

 through the desert, along the river, and over the rough lava fields. 

 Those early pioneers traveling through Snake River Valley found 

 the country through which they ]>assed infested by Indians and teem- 

 ing with big game in great variety. There were bison, the distinc- 

 tively American antelope, the " pronghorn," elk, deer, bears, and 

 wolves in great numbers. Today extensive irrigation projects have 

 converted the fertile soil over great areas of the Snake River Valley 

 into prosperous farming communities dotted here and there with 

 towns and villages ; and both the wild tribes of Indians and the big 

 game animals, giving way to the advance of civilization, have 

 vanished forever from this region. Today the big-game ranges, where 

 not under cultivation, are entirely turned over to grazing lands for 

 domestic animals, the bison, deer, and antelope having been replaced 

 by horses, cattle and sheep. 



Great as these changes have lieen, far greater took place in the 

 ages of the past, long before the dawn of civilization. And. like 

 the early pioneers of the Old Oregon trail, the inhaljitants of that day 

 have left traces which, intelligently studied, give us some interesting 

 glimpses into their life history. These signs and evidences of a 

 dififerent past are presented to us in the form of fossil remains left in 

 the slowly accumulated sedimentary deposits of lakes and stream 

 channels which nature has fonued in past times, and which in a more 

 recent day have been uncovered in part through the cutting down of 

 stream channels and the heavy rains of past centuries. 



Usually these evidences of a different past are not intelligiljlc or 

 even recognized as such liy the layman. It is only when such huge 

 bones as those of the mammoth or mastodon are discovered or where 

 bones are found protruding from rocks or in other unusual places 

 that interest is developed in these evidences of a former animal life 

 dift'erent from that of the present. 



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