This is Mazon Monday post #254. What's your favorite Mazon Creek fossil? Tell us at email:[email protected].
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In less than a month, fossil collecting season will begin at the IDNR Mazonia-Braidwood State Fish and Wildlife Area. Many of you are likely eager to get out there before the vegetation returns and obscures the concretions scattered on the ground. Spring is the prime season for fossil hunting at Pit 11, the original name for Mazonia-Braidwood when it served as a strip mining pit for the Peabody Coal Company. The numbering system for these mines actually originated with the Northern Illinois Coal Corporation (NICC or the Northern), which operated in the Braidwood, Wilmington, and Coal City areas from the 1920s until the late 1940s. In 1949, NICC merged with Sinclair Coal Company, which was later acquired by Peabody Coal Company in 1955. Pit 11 opened around 1956, and mining operations continued until 1974, yielding over 10 million tons of coal during its actve years.
When Pit 11 opened, it immediatelly started yielding never before seen fossil animals from the Carboniferous Period about 307 to 309 million years ago. Many of these animals, like the Tully Monster, are known only from the Mazon Creek fossil deposit.
Collecting fossils at Pit 11 is free and open to the public. But, there is a permit that should be filled out and carried while collecting.
I was looking through some old photos from the archives at the Carbon Hill School Museum and found these interesting views of the spoil piles in Pit 11 in the 1980s. These photos are from the Tom Testa Collection at the museum. From the looks of these photos, one should conclude that there are many, many concretions still to be collected out there in Pit 11. Wouldn't you love to just reach into the photo and pick some of those up?
You just have to be willing to fight the sticker bushes, poison ivy, and ticks to get to the treasure. Remember, every concretion is a lottery ticket to be opened, preferably via freeze/thaw. Tully monsters, shrimp, worms, plants, and, yes, jellies are found in significant numbers every year. Oh, and also don't lose interest when your first 10 fossils are jellyfish/sea anemones...
There is good stuff to be found! Like this tully collected in the summer of 2024.
The historical photos came from the Tom Testa Collection at the Carbon Hill School Museum. We've featured other parts of their collection in quite a few of our posts.
- Mazon Monday #30 - The Diamond Mine Disaster
- Mazon Monday #130 - Braceville Spoil Pile
- Mazon Monday #172 - Fossil Insect Symposium 1990
- Mazon Monday #190 - Carbon Hill School Museum
- Mazon Monday #176 - Please, try for more fossil insects!
- Throwback Thursday #107 - G-Shaft Candy
- Throwback Thursday #127 - Piano Hill on Route 66
- Throwback Thursday #150 - History of Coal City and Surrounding Areas
- Throwback Thursday #167 - Tom Testa Winter Freeze/Thaw
- Throwback Thursday #173 - Chiton Hill
The museum's curator, Michele Micetich, gives tours on request.
The original 1893 schoolhouse displays hundreds of original artifacts depicting immigrant turn-of-the-century life of families, businesses, and coal mines. Original items include the jailhouse iron doors, soccer trophies and bocce balls, coal mining tools, furniture and household items, old store supplies, Illinois coal reports, maps and plats, and plenty of family memories; there is something to interest everyone.
A significant portion of the north room represents all the coal fields of Grundy and Will Counties, Illinois. In the south classroom you can sit at the desks, read through the old books, see photos depicting our classes and school history, 1893-1955. Three rooms are filled with photographs, artifacts, local memorabilia, kitchen, bedroom and store displays from "the old days," plus a diorama of Carbon Hill, in its mining heyday, circa 1900.
The Carbon Hill Historical Society, a chartered and registered not-for-profit organization, invites anyone interested in our museum and local history to visit and also to join our society, which owns the school and sponsors all of its programs.Please phone Michele Micetich, 815-347-0810 or email [email protected] for more information on programs, presentations, hours and appointments.
