Video
Letters from Agate: H. Cook to J.D. Figgins: Sept 1924
Transcript
Agate, Nebraska. September 7th, 1924.
Dear Figgins, I am just back from a 10 days field trip, doing oil geology and a little hard rock work thrown in, mostly in Wyoming, but a little as far your way as the Wellington region. Incidentally, a few days ago I accidentally located a Laramie dinosaur prospect in Colorado, that you want to look into further. If you do, drive to Fort Collins, then take the Cheyenne Road until you come to an old abandoned coal mine, which is just along the east side of the highway, to your right. This is an old abandoned small mine with dump and track left in place, and the only one along there. Pass this about a hundred yards or so, and you will see a plain trail road leaving the highway to your right, running up the slope to the northeast. Take this a couple hundred yards or so until you reach the crest of the knoll, and walk along this little ridge east, uphill 100 yards or so until you reach the C. & S.R.R. fence, which cuts across the ridge. On top of this ridge, at the fence and inside the right of way in concretions of a strongly stained iron oxide sandstone, you will find a wagon load more or less of "Lizard". (Lizzard is spelled with three z's.) I found it after sundown, and only had had minutes to look it over, and really don't know how valuable or worthless it is, or even what it is. But there is a lot of it scattered in those concretions, and I did not want to disturb anything to attract attention to it, just then. There is quite a lot of fossil wood near and around this spot, also, and across the R.R. Cut looked like an area worth further prospecting. I believe it is new locality, so far as bones are concerned; and as there are ant hills also near, if you go, please glance these over for possible marsupial teeth. I intended to go back and see what it amounted to, but my work took me elsewhere. It is something like 20 miles west of Fort Collins, and the roads are very good
While in Wyoming, I ran into a very interesting locality a very small extent, where I found Manganese Fulgerites in the Oreodon beds! As far as I can learn, these are an entirely new thing. They occur near the head of Chugwater Creek, about 50 miles northwest of Cheyenne. They are so very interesting and unusual, that occurs to me that you may want to get a good one. I am sending on to you under separate cover, some surface weathered out small pieces, to show you what they are like. They run in size from three inches in diameter down, and of unknown length. I excavated one nearly four feet down, with my light prospecting pick in that heavy Brule clay, and as it was still going down as large as when I started, I decided it was out of my limits of equipment,and gave it up. I believe with a heavy pick and shovel, one could get a very interesting specimen, - or more, in that spot, which is only a fraction of an acre, but has a number of them. I brought about 150 pounds of them back with me, from the surface mostly. Keep these sent if you want them; and if you want more, I can tell you how to find the place, or possibly later go there with you.
On my return here yesterday, I found your letter of the 27th about the bison, arrows, and part cranium! This is SPLENDID! You probably recall that Handel T. Hartin found a similar thing some years ago, and no one would credit his find as being anything but accidental association. Some of these days, it will be forced down the necks, heels first, into some of the worthy mortals who known it all now, as to when and where the race of Man came and went. That men WERE in America in late Pleistocene times, if not earlier! They may even then find it hard to swallow, but when the doctor finally says "take it" there will be little left to discuss. This find makes me even more anxious to break loose and go over and join your crew for a time, this fall or winter, to study that stuff, along with the other things you have. As far as I can see now, I really and truly CAN do it, when I get ranch affairs lined out here later on, as we have really excellent help here now to look after the place. Whereas, and Now Therefore, etc, these premises being so proven, if you still have it in your heart, soul, or gizzard, wherever you kept it, for me to line your crew for a while, and will have the wherewith all to keep me for a few weeks, I will surely consider the matter closed and harness Henry and saunter over there, if the snow does not make it necessary to take the cars by then. And in this connection; I am well aware of how you feel about renumeration with me, and I appreciate your thought. And I'm also aware that we all have to cut according to our cloth, and so, just forget what you think you'd like to see me paid, and figure what you CAN do, that I can try to earn, if you can do it at all now (or rather a few weeks later on) and don't think I will be insulted at any figure you name,-for it's not primarily the money I am considering it for. And yet, I cannot entirely neglect this, and donate my time either, much as I would like to if I could afford it; but just as this time ranching has been anything but lucrative, and I feel it necessary that whatever I do, I get enough to help the kiddies out a little in school, or I can't afford to do it, no matter how I want to do so. In any event, I'd be glad to hear from you frankly about this so soon as convenient, as I want to make plans very soon as to what I will do this winter, if I can get away from here as I expect to do.
In some ways, I'd like to go a while to New York, to have a chance to study that Mongolian fauna firsthand, and see the new Indian fossils Brown got, and make some comparative studies that would be of uses to us in studying your material, and some new things I have here. Of course I could do this; but for reasons you will know, in other ways I am not so keen about it. I have found some oil prospects this summer that may in time prove profitable; but just now they will not be immediately remunerative. I want to find just one profitable oil field, and have reasonable holdings, and then commercial geology can whistle, so far as I'm concerned. I would like to concentrate on research, if I could just afford to do so.
This summer I have collected a lot of fine specimens of rocks and minerals, and some fossils, incidental to commercial work, and have shipped them to the Chadron Normal to start off their department there, and the classwork there. I have not been to Chadron yet, and so have not seen the things you sent, nor yet even heard that they have arrived there, though I suppose that they have. The family moved down there a day or so before I got back here, as school begins there right away, and the Barbours were supposed to be there now, also. I am going down tomorrow, so will find out about things then. Professor Barbour is going to help organize things there, and start them off, which will be a great help.
I am tremendously interested in your buffalo find, and am most anxious to see that evidence firsthand, and that part of a fossil cranium. From what you say, it would appear the deposits would almost certainly be of Pleistocene age, if not older. I have Allen's buffalo data, here on modern variations, which would be useful in a comparative way.
I must not write more now, as I have much that requires attention at once.
With kindest regards and all best wishes Sincerely yours, Harold J. Cook.
Description
Harold J. Cook's letter to J.D. Figgins on September 7, 1924. Jesse Figgins was the first director of the then named Colorado Museum of Natural History. The work Harold describes in this letter depicts Figgins' crew's find of Paleo-Indian projectile points. This find proved that humans first occupied North America about 10,000 years ago. Note: It is read by Ranger Tera Lynn. It is translated into ASL; has closed-captions, audio description, and a transcript.
Duration
8 minutes, 50 seconds
Credit
NPS: T.Gray
Date Created
12/18/2022
Copyright and Usage Info