Falls of the Ohio State Park
Dear Geology Club Members:
Falls of the Ohio State Park
(located across the Ohio River from Louisville, KY) and the
Clarksville Riverfront Foundation
announce the 2006 Falls Fossil Festival! This, our 12th event, will be
held September 16 - 17 at one of the world's most spectacular naturally exposed
fossil beds! Visitors can explore a luxuriant Middle Devonian patch
reef packed with fossils on
the riverbed at the Falls of the Ohio.
This show, held rain or
shine, features outdoor vendors selling fossils, minerals, books,
related items and food. There
are fossil bed tours and special workshops and lectures from
renowned paleontologists and geologists in the Interpretive Center. There is an activity area for
children with scheduled and on-going programs. We have a special fossil
exhibit - The Nature of
Shells. This exhibit displays fossil and modern shells from around the
world, a marine aquarium with
different types of shelled animals. Topics of our guest speakers cover
cephalopods, trace fossils, the Mazon Creek fauna, faunas with pyrite-replaced shells,
fossils identification, and fossil collecting.
Collecting is prohibited at
the Falls of the Ohio; however, a local quarry donates 30 tons each of
fossil-bearing Silurian
Waldron shale and Devonian Jeffersonville Limestone residuum. Dig for
brachiopods, bryozoans, corals, crinoids,
cystoids, snails, clams, and trilobites in Hanson America’s Fossil
Collecting Piles. We can direct your club to other localities to collect fossils. This
would be an ideal weekend field trip. We hope members of your group
will be able to attend!
Sincerely yours,
Editor’s note: In subsequent
emails Alan told me: There are a bunch of motels / hotels in the area.
Closest are Fairfield Inn (Jeffersonville,IN),
Ramada Inn Riverfront, and Holiday Inn Lakeview. There are plenty along
the I-65 corridor in Clarksville and Jeffersonville, Indiana. A link from the
Falls of the Ohio web page to our local CVB has info about places to
stay.
If you can’t make the trip in
person, their web site has a wonderful virtual tour. Check out: http://www.fallsoftheohio.org/