This is Mazon Monday post #5. Some of the information in this post was provided by John Liskey, former ESCONI member, who has generously donated fossil, mineral, and assorted junior material. Thanks, John!
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Mazon Creek Project was a program sponsored by Northeastern Illinois University. Founded in the 1960s, by the late Eugene Richardson Curator of Fossil Invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago Illinois. It was originally an attempt to encourage more communication between paleontologists and amateur collectors. After Peabody Coal Company sold Pit 11 to Commonwealth Edison for the construction of the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant, some areas were lost to collecting. The main goal of the project became keeping the Mazonia-Braidwood Conservation Area open for collecting by scientists, school children, scout groups, and visitors from other states. Some of the islands in the cooling pond and land to the south were leased to the State of Illinois for fishing and fossil collecting. Fossil collecting is open to all from March 1st to September 30th.
ESCONI members, including Andy Hay and Jack Wittry, were instrumental in the "Mazon Creek Project" and because of their and other ESCONI members efforts we can collect at Pit 11 even today! ESCONI Hill was named after the club and at one time was one of the most popular collecting areas.
“Mazon Creek Fossils hold a special place in paleontological record. Because conditions of life, of death, and of burial were unusually propitious, we find a more complete record of plant and animal populations than in most other fossil occurrences….I suppose that these elegant fossils have been collected…for centuries… But we have no inkling of any collections made by the Indians. The tradition that continues to the present has begun in the mid-nineteenth century, when there were already established towns and farms in the Illinois valley…” Eugene Richardson, The Mazon Creek Fossil Flora
When the Mazon Creek Project was active, they issued official collecting passes. You sent in a notarized release and they would send you a card. Here is one from a former ESCONI member, John Liskey. John was a junior member in the 1980s and his father, also John, ran the junior group during that period. You had to present the card to enter the collecting area. There is still a permit needed to collect fossils at Pit 11. You can download one here.
There was a brochure for collecting.
Here was the Honor Roll for 1992, which listed Honorary, Life, and Sustaining members. There are more than a few ESCONI members on that list!
There was an newsletter for a while. Here is the first issue from 1999.pdf.
ESCONI Hill long ago... before being overgrown with modern day plant-life.
