U-Dig Fossils Visitor Experiences at U-DIG Fossils from 1998 Return to Home

September 26, 1998 by

The lack of a web page didn't stop me. Undaunted, I drove to Delta and beyond to the quarry and had a great time. It took almost three hours to get there from Orem, Utah. It's possible I didn't take the best route or didn't travel at maximum speed. The gas gauge on my rental car malfunctioned and dropped to "empty" fifteen miles outside of Delta.  I could see it, but I thought I might be in for a long walk.

My first advice is to fill your gas tank and your belly every chance you get. Gas stations are few and far between. Expect very high gas prices, too.  This is rural Utah. In places, cattle roam the range and there's no fence next to the road. You may not see many other cars.  The 20-mile last leg of the trip to the quarry is gravel road.  My rental car made it down the gravel without any trouble, although the first few dips in the road were quite a surprise at 60 miles an hour.

This left about two hours of digging before I had to leave. I came away with a heavy suitcase full of delightful fossils. Apart from some nice two-inch trilobites, including positive-negative matched pairs, I carried home a number of small partial pieces of trilobites to give to the kids at the local rock club. It took another three hours to travel the approximately 140 miles back to the Salt Lake City airport by a different western route through Tooele that avoided the interstate traffic.

While at the quarry, I met Robert Wetzel, also known as "Trilobite Bob". He was the U-DIG representative on duty that Saturday. He gave me a business card that had been designed and given to him as a gift by another satisfied customer.

The other visitors at the quarry were a Scout troop. They seemed to be having a great time. They got a big thrill when Bob told them the value of their trilobites if they had to purchase them in the shops in Delta, or heaven forbid the price far from Utah. For example, a big trilobite seems almost free in the quarry, but might fetch $25 in Delta, and $100 in Australia. The Scouts traveled the gravel road on bicycles from the highway to the quarry.

The shale at the quarry splits so very easily. I'm handy with an Estwing hammer, and I brought my own splitting tools. With just the hammer, I could whack a good breadbox-sized boulder into one- or two-inch thick plates in a matter of minutes. I've never seen such ideal material.

The Scouts (being teenagers) didn't quite follow Bob's advice, and whacked at some less productive rock. If you do follow Bob's advice, you'll easily see the spray-painted markings on the rich veins in the hillside and learn to spot that material in the loosened rock field.

It was convenient to have a number of other people in the quarry at the same time, to learn the location and appearance of productive rock. Even examining the scrap left by others was quite productive. Believe it or not, some people forget to look at both halves of a split rock.

September 1998 by Demaris Frantz

Nice site you made for U-Dig! My husband and I had a vacation in Utah in 1994, and we specifically included this area on our itinerary. We found out about trilobites in the House Range in the Utah Handbook, by Bill Weir, and then did some research to find where we could collect. We were delighted to find out about U-Dig.

It was a great day. There were only a few people there, and the U-Dig rep was very helpful to us. (I don't remember who it was...) We had brought our own tools, also. We found a nice number of the common trilobites there, saving the negatives, too. The largest was a perfect Asaphiscus, about 1". It was indeed easy splitting rock, and not crumbly like some of the shale around here. We were warned when the rep left that we should leave, also, but we weren't ready. (So many trilobites, so little time!) We chanced it (even though it was Friday the 13th!) and stayed longer. The last person to leave before us had a 4x4 pickup, and he had a heck of a time getting up the road out of the quarry. Barely made it, spinning all the way. That made me pretty nervous, looking at our little rental car, but when we went up, we just kept it at a steady pace in low gear and crawled right out.

Then we proceeded to drive around the House Range area, seeing the hermit's cabin in the Marjum Pass (not sure how we found that one, there is no marker. But we went on descriptions from the Utah handbook and intuition.) We barreled along those gravel roads at 50+, seeing nary a soul but one hopeful camper with 2 dogs in the back of his truck. We stopped to say hello and he wistfully asked us if we had seen any trees.

We visited U-Dig's owner, Loy (and I can't remember and didn't write down his last name) at his Bug House in Delta, and he offered us the opportunity the next day to collect geodes at his site in the Dugway Range. He's a really great guy, and I'm glad he's still prospering and has a good presence on the web (now thanks to you.) After overnight at the Best Western, we followed Loy's dust trail as he dragged a big excavator to his geode site. Good thing we could see his dust, because we couldn't fathom his directions. We collected geodes there and headed back to Delta. We ended up with over 50 lbs of rocks between the two days..... not what you want to drag home on a cross-country flight with you.

We stopped at the Harris's shop in Delta, (for whom the Alokistocare harrisi is named) and they packaged our findings and shipped them home to us via UPS. Altogether it was a really great couple of days in the Delta area. And it was fun to get out the photo album and reminisce while I wrote this to you. Thanks for the post to Rocks-and-fossils mailing list so I could find your site.