The Historic Carnegie Quarry

A black and white photograph of some people at the original Carnegie Quarry dig site. They are using a pulley system to extract a fossil from the rock face.
Excavations of the historic Carnegie Quarry went on from 1909 until 1924.

NPS Douglass Collection, edited by Evan Hall

Today's Quarry Exhibit Hall at Dinosaur National Monument houses what remains of the historic Carnegie Quarry, found in 1909 in Jensen, Utah. This Fossil Quarry was discovered and excavated under the direction of paleontologist, Earl Douglass, who worked for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was sent by the museum's directors to find and excavate dinosaur fossils specifically for display in the Carnegie Museum. Having worked in the Uintah Basin before, Douglass knew the area was home to dinosaur fossils. He spent many weeks finding broken fossils before stumbling upon the site that would become the Carnegie Quarry. After 15 years of excavations, Douglass proposed that the remains of the quarry be preserved as a site where "people can see the place where these ancient monsters have been entombed for ages."

 
 
A black and white photograph of an older man with a large beard leaning on a shovel. He is looking at the unexcavated find of 8 vertebrae from Apatosaurus.
George Goodrich, a Uintah Basin local, was one of the first people hired by Douglass to assist in the search for dinosaur fossils. Here is Goodrich standing with the first discovery of the Carnegie Quarry, 8 connected tailbones from an Apatosaurus.

NPS Douglass Collection, edited by Evan Hall

Finding the Carnegie Quarry

The Task
In 1909, the directors of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania decided they wanted more dinosaur fossils to display. The directors reached out to the museum's paleontologist, a man named Earl Douglass. They tasked Douglass with the job of finding dinosaur bones, excavating them, and shipping them back to the museum so that they could be displayed in the museum's new dinosaur hall.

Thinking Like a Paleontologist
While many fossil sites are found by chance, paleontologists often have to rely on more than just luck if they want to find something worthwhile. When deciding where to look, a good understanding of geology is critical. This was just as true for Earl Douglass back in 1909. Thankfully, many of the key principles of geology were already established by the early 1900s. Just like paleontologists today, Douglass needed to find an area with some very specific characteristics if he wanted to find a dinosaur worthy of display in the Carnegie Museum.

Even in Douglass's time, dinosaur bones had only ever been found in rocks dating to the Mesozoic Era (about 252 to 66 million years ago). Since the museum wanted a big dinosaur, Douglass was hoping to find a sauropod (a long-necked, long-tailed plant eater). The largest sauropods had only ever been found in rocks dating to the Jurassic and Cretacious periods. They also lived on land, so that ruled out any rock layers that had formed from ocean sediments or inland seas. The best-preserved fossils typically form from ancient groundwater bringing minerals into the bone. Armed with this information, Douglass had a pretty good hunch for where he could find the bones he was looking for. Fortunately, an area where he had worked before met this description exactly: northeastern Utah.
 

Discovery Day: August 17, 1909
Douglass had been to northeastern Utah before looking for mammal fossils from the Cenozoic Era, so he was very familiar with the geology. Additonally, the
Morrison Formation (a sedimentary rock layer dating to the Late Jurassic period) had long been identified as a great source of dinosaur fossils. Since northeastern Utah had already been mapped by the U.S. Geological Survey previously, Douglass could see that the Morrison Formation was exposed there, which increased his chances of finding good specimens. He arrived in northeast Utah sometime in late July or early August of 1909, and hired a Uintah Basin resident named, George Goodrich, to help him with the search. They looked for weeks, but only found small fragments of bone and a botched excavation by amateur fossil hunters — nothing worthy of the Carnegie Museum. Then, just as Earl Douglass was ready to give up, he stumbled across an amazing find: 8 connected tailbones from an Apatosaurus, a long-necked sauropod from the Late Jurassic Period! It was the first discovery of the Carnegie Quarry.

"At last, in the top of the ledge where the softer overlying beds form a divide, a kind of saddle, I saw eight of the tail bones of [an Apatosaurus] in exact position. It was a beautiful sight." — Earl Douglass
 
A black and white photo showing visitors of all ages at the Carnegie Quarry dig site. Children and women in dresses with umbrellas for shade look down at the original 8 Apatosaurus bones in the rock.
Women and children were among the first visitors to the Carnegie Quarry dig site. Here they can be seen in the crowd peering down at the original "discovery bones," 8 tail bones from an Apatosaurus.

NPS Douglass Collection, edited by Evan Hall

Visitors Arrive

The first visitors to the Carnegie Quarry arrived just five days after the "discovery bones" were found. Earl Douglass chronicled their arrival in his journal on August 22, 1909...

"Today two loads of people came from Vernal to see the dinosaur and there were several loads from other places. For a time, the rocks... swarmed with people of all ages. Mothers and grandmothers ascended the steep, almost dangerous, slopes with babies and there were men and women well along in years." — Earl Douglass

The public's interest in dinosaurs was very apparent to Earl Douglass. Visitors continued coming to watch the excavations for many years, some even from as far away as New Zealand. Because of the obvious public interest, Douglass was deeply convinced that the Carnegie Quarry had amazing potential as a place for learning. In October 1915, President Woodrow Wilson established the Carnegie Quarry and 80 acres surrounding it as Dinosaur National Monument.
 
A black and white photograph of the Carnegie Quarry excavation site. In front of the quarry wall, which is painted with grid lines, two men load a jacketed dinosaur fossil onto a travois pulled by two mules.
Exposed sections of the Carnegie Quarry were painted with grid lines so that detailed notes about the exact position of each fossil could be recorded before being excavated. Here, two men load a jacketed fossil onto a travois hauled by 2 mules.

NPS Douglass Collection, edited by Evan Hall

Early Excavations (1909-1924)

Excavations of the Carnegie Quarry for the purposes of the Carnegie Museum lasted from 1909 until 1922. During this time, Douglass and his team uncovered an incredible number of dinosaur fossils from the Late Jurassic period. They extracted over 300 tons of fossils from the Carnegie Quarry. Among the finds were 10 mostly-complete skeletons, an astounding 14 skulls, 2 new dinosaur species previously unknown to science, a new species of tiny Jurassic crocodilian, and one of the best specimens of sauropod dinosaur ever uncovered. However, following the death of the museum's founder and financial benefactor, Andrew Carnegie, the Carnegie Museum's directors pulled funding from the project. Earl Douglass, who had found the Carnegie Quarry and overseen excavations there for the past 15 years, didn't want to see any fossils left unstudied or broken apart and distributed as souvenirs. In an effort to protect the fossils and the scientific information inherit to them, Douglass invited the Smithsonian Institue and the University of Utah to excavate the remaining bones. By 1924, most of the visible fossils had been extracted.
 
A black and white photograph of Earl Douglass surrounded by stacked crates. He is sitting down, with a notebook open on his lap, writing in it.
Earl Douglass was the paleontologist who found the Carnegie Quarry and oversaw its excavation for 15 years. His diary entries record the things his team uncovered during the excavation process.

NPS Douglass Collection, edited by Evan Hall

A New Kind of Exhibit

Douglass's Dream
After 15 years of near-continuous activity, excavations at the Carnegie Quarry ended in 1924. Deep cuts had been dug into either side of the hillside where priceless fossils had been removed. However, there was still a huge slab of rock in the center that remained untouched, about 20 feet (6 meters) deep and 150 feet (45 meters) long. This slab was in the same rock formation as the sections the team had already excavated. Being a paleontologist, Earl Douglass knew that this slab of rock likely harbored many more bones from which the public could learn. In a letter to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, Dr. Charles Walcott, Douglass expressed his vision for a new kind of exhibit...

"I hope that the Government, for the benefit of science and the people, will uncover a large area, leave the bones and skeletons in relief and house them. It would make one of the most astounding and instructive sights imaginable." — Earl Douglass
 
Convincing the Public
According to Earl's son, Gawin, his father tried for years to convince the public and the government that this museum would be a worthwhile venture. However, he passed away in January 1931 before he could see his vision become reality. Three years after his passing, the Vernal Express newspaper published Douglass's "Vision of a National Museum." The document, written by Earl Douglass himself 15 years prior, was given to the Vernal Express by his wife, Pearl. In it, Douglass describes sites that have inspired him and expresses his feelings about the special place where he spent much of his career...

"We have visited eleven of the national parks and monuments in our country and each has had its particular sites and pleasures. There is freedom and good fellowship everywhere, but Dinosaur National Monument is especially attractive to those who are intellectually inclined, and we have never been in any place where there were such intellectual treats, and where we have met so many people we can never forget." — Earl Douglass
 
The Quarry Exhibit Hall as it appears today from the parking lot. It's a large glass building with a sloping roof built into the side of a rock face.
The Quarry Exhibit Hall as it appears today. The building is built into the side of the Morrison Rock Formation on the site of the former Carnegie Quarry.

NPS / Jake Holgerson

Dream to Reality: The Quarry Exhibit Hall
It took time, but the National Park Service eventually brought Douglass's vision to life. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) deepened and widened the area in front of the quarry site with the intent of building a museum. In 1952, excavations on the rock wall finally resumed, and a tin shed was built on the eastern side of the wall to shield the workers and the fossils they were uncovering. In 1958, the Quarry Exhibit Hall was finished. This museum was built around the hillside to showcase the fossils in-situ as Earl Douglass had imagined. The goal was always to leave the fossils in place, not to remove them. For almost 35 years, generations of people could watch paleontologists and fossil preparators actively revealing fossils on the Wall of Bones within the Quarry Exhibit Hall. Once the National Park Service was satisfied that the bones were sufficiently revealed in place, work on the wall ended in the 1990s. However, care and maintenance of the wall still continues as needed. Today, Dinosaur National Monument remains a place of constant study and discovery, where visitors from all over the world come to learn about the distant past, just as Earl Douglass had hoped.
 

Quarry Timeline

 

1909

 

1910

 

1911

 

1912

 

1913

 

1915

 

1916

 

1919

 

1920 to Present

 

Last updated: August 19, 2024

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