Before leaving the mountains we stopped at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, where redwoods once towered over the land, now just petrified stumps, and where thousands of fossils have been found, one of the most diverse deposits in the world. In the first stump photo you may notice two dark brown spots, the remnants of a saw blade stuck in the wood when someone had the great idea to try and dismantle the stump and take it to the world’s fair. In the second stump photo you’ll notice a band around it and a structure overhead, both are there to protect and preserve what remains. Other stumps have been buried again by the park service for the same reasons.
