This site is located about 45 miles west of Delta, Utah near the the two commercial quarries. It is a public site, i.e. free.
Lat: 39 Deg 21' 29" N
Long: 113 Deg 15' 58" W
The site is visible on Google Earth. Access to the site is a right turn, short of the U Dig site. Cross the ravine and go up to the right.
The road is bumpy and rutted but passable. Else, its not a long walk from the main road.
Once across the ravine, the dirt road snakes about a mile or two to the quarry. The quarry is visible as a grey area up the hill.
BLM Trilobite Quarry
The quarry is about an acre in size and has been worked on several levels. There are piles of scraps everywhere.
Trilobites in Dark Scraps
Initially, I searched in the piles of scraps of darker material with little success. Splitting the scraps further is hard work.
We even tried to dig out some fresh material, to no avail.
Brown Mud Layers
After giving up on the dark grey shale, I decided to snoop on the surface for a while.
The surface is muddy with lots of shale fragments. Close inspection shows many broken heads and tails.
Brown Mud Surface
Soon, I found a complete Elrathia kingi.
Further searching resulted in more finds of black Kingi's
Another complete Elrathia Kingi
Also, watch for the white color of the upside down ones.
We found all of these in about 2 hours.
A tiny Elarathia Kingi
Here is the Asaphiscus Wheeleri, prepped, and the tiny Kingi
Unfortunately, the Asaphiscus was not complete, when prepped.
Elrathia kingi with a small one on its back.
All in all a good site. However, if you want to take home alot of higher quality trilobites, the pay quarries are well worth the cost.
I recommend trying out both a pay quarry and the public quarry.
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