The John Day Fossil Beds Monument

We love our geology, one of the things that make living in the west so great. In this trip we are spending a few days visiting all three of the areas that comprise the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Over 20% of the entire state of Oregon contains fossil beds, and this massive area in the center of the state has a unique set of geological layers that helped paleontologists figure out a lot about animal and plant evolution from 45 to 5 million years ago.

The first visit was to the beautiful basalt cliffs of the Palisades in the Clarno area. We worked up quite a sweat hiking up the cliffs with Josie. April is the perfect time to visit - the weather was absolutely gorgeous, and the sun was not yet unrelenting as it will be in mid-summer.

Even in the dappled brush you can see the horizontal lines in the surrounding hills from the different layers of water and mud (geology!)

The second area within the Monument we visited were the Painted Hills. Oh my! The colors were amazing. The hills almost looked like velvet. Red from iron, of course, deposited during the wettest time periods, tan from dryer, and spots of black that were manganese deposits left by certain plants.

The final day we checked out the Sheep Rock area. This part showed signs of volcanic activity as evidenced by the green and white rock formations. It would have looked perfectly in place in the middle of Yellowstone. The entire John Day are was pretty impressive and offered a unique set of geologies.