Multi-million dollar facility will make site more people-friendly.
JOHN DAY FOSSIL BEDS N.M., ORE.—At John Day Fossil Beds, home of one of the world's best fossil records detailing millions of years of plant and animal life, history is always changing.
"We're digging up new stories every year," park ranger John Fiedor recently told the Baker City Herald, "new findings that are changing what we thought we knew."
These finds are not lost on paleontologists, for whom the site is a trove of riches. But the monument has remained largely under-appreciated by the general public, attracting only 110,000 or so visitors each year, compared to the 1.9 million annual visitors to Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. With construction of the new $8.4 million Thomas Condon Paleontology Center under way, however, park officials think that is about to change. The 11,000-square-foot visitor center and paleontology lab is already generating local buzz.
"Many of our visitors discover us accidentally while traveling along State Route 19," said Superintendent Jim Hammett. "We'll have them for a short period of time and intrigue them, perhaps. But with all the publicity the new center is getting, I believe John Day will become much more of a destination."
That optimism is based largely on the people-friendly aspects of the Condon center: its exhibits, films, and displayed fossils, its fun educational programs for children, and its glass wall separating the working lab from the main area that will provide visitors with the opportunity to watch scientists at work. These and other features of the center are designed to give visitors a better sense of connection to the site.
"The scale and the importance of the fossil resources we have here are mostly invisible," said Hammett. "The fossils are hard to find, and it is even harder to grasp their significance. With this center, we will be able to do a much better job of displaying our large variety of fossils and explaining their importance in understanding our Earth's history."
Heather Weiner, NPCA's Northwest regional director, said that the center should also boost the region's economy. "The eastern Oregon community is realizing there are limits on use and extraction. To survive, the community needs a new, dependable economic engine."
The Condon center will also fill a more logistical park need: storage and research space. The more than 40,000 fossil specimens found in the park are too many for the current visitor center to store—let alone display and interpret.
"The center will enable us to have all of our fossils in one location and interpret the many different things that happened here throughout time, such as climate change, the movement of land mass, evolution of species, and extinction," said Hammett. "These topics all raise interpretive themes and questions that we'll continue to try to answer.
"We're learning more and more about them all the time," he continued, "and we'll now be able to do a much better job of promoting research and facilitating it more efficiently."
Volunteers, including longtime NPCA member Phyllis Park Saarinen of Gainesville, Florida, also will help to prepare fossils for the Condon center's expected 2004 opening. Saarinen, an amateur paleontologist, is excited about both the importance and beauty of John Day. "Being able to prepare fossils for the new center, in the context of a gorgeous landscape—I will be in paradise."
