Best places near Colorado Springs to dig?

[macclass5]

All, 

 

Where are the best places to find different types of fossils with in 75 miles of Colorado Springs?

[Mark Kmiecik]

The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument near Pike's Peak would be a good place to start your research. It is one of the richest fossil formations in the world. I would visit and learn as much as I could there before beginning my own search for fossils in the area.

[FossilDAWG]

Between Colorado Springs and Pueblo, and east of Pueblo, there are lots of conical hills called teepee buttes.  These are Late Cretaceous limestone formations that developed around methane seeps on the sea floor.  The surrounding rock is Pierre Shale, which is easily eroded, so the resistant limestone of the teepee buttes stand out.  They contain bivalves (very abundant), some gastropods and ammonites, and rarely crabs.  Unfortunately they are all on private land, so you have to figure out the land owner and get permission if you can.  The same goes for Baculite Mesa, a prominent steep-sided hill you can see from the University campus in Pueblo.  The drive in takes you past many large shooting targets, as the owners like to sit on top of the mesa and target shoot, and they don't use 22's if you get my drift.  Trespassing is not recommended.   If you can get permission, the sides of the mesa are loaded with Baculites (straight ammonites).  Hoploscaphites ammonites are substantially less common, and other ammonites are even scarcer but they turn up on occasion.  Inoceramus clams are not uncommon, and gastropods occur infrequently.  A few years ago someone found a giant spider crab, but that was a once-in-a-lifetime find.

 

Given the difficulty with securing permission, I suggest you should consider joining a local mineral/fossil club.  This will put you in touch with other collectors, always a fun enterprise, and clubs arrange trips and take care of the permission side of things.  A quick Google search came up with the Colorado Springs Minerological Society, which has a fossil section.

 

One other thing, keep in mind that the state owns the highway right-of-ways and consider collecting from roadcuts to be theft of state property.  At a minimum I would avoid collecting along state highways where law enforcement is likely to pass by.  I have heard they enforce the law, or at a minimum they will make you move along immediately.  Farm roads and similar non-highway type roads may or may not be subject to the same restrictions, though law enforcement is less likely to happen by.

 

Good luck!

 

Don

[jpc]

The Clare Quarry right next door to Florissant Fossil Beds.  Same fossils, not a National Monument.

 

Baculite Mesa is posted with a sign that includes the landowner's phone number.    

 

And join WIPS.  Western Interior Paleontological Society based out of the museum there in Denver.  They do field trips all summer long... except for covid-summer.  And they do Baculite Mesa once a year.  

[Mikeygene]

Back in my nefarious youth in the early 1960s, the best place to collect fossils was a place we used to call "the clay beds". Or "the motorcycle dump". Now it's call "the mesa". Back then it was no-mans land, on the mesa at Fillmore Hill. It was basically a dump where people would shove abandoned cars into the ravines.  A fantastic place to ride motocross. The adobe was - and still is - completely unsuitable for building. And I'm sure the Olive Company that developed it, or whoever owns it now will eventually learn that the hard way. Now there is a King Supers on the north, and a VA hospital on the south. On the north, where Brodrick & Gibbons had a batch plant for paving, the road cut on Fillmore was lousy with baculite fossils. That same formation extended down to Uinita Street, where there was also a good road cut. I would suspect that collecting is not allowed on those roadways. On the south side of Fillmore Street, between the VA Hospital and where the million dollar homes are higher up on the mesa, I filled many a bucket with exemplary brachiopod fossils, some with the pretty pearl intact, most without.  It was a good time to be a kid. Not sure what it looks like now.