Falls of the Ohio

The rule here has a loophole, and the park tells you about it. Fossil collecting is prohibited on the fossil beds and the river bank. But the park keeps collecting piles, filled with rock and fossils brought in from quarries, by the parking lot behind the interpretive center, and those piles are the only place at the Falls where rocks may be removed. So you can look at 390-million-year-old sea floor in the morning and still go home with something in your pocket.

The beds are the point. They are Devonian, Jeffersonville Limestone, and they are among the largest exposed Devonian fossil beds anywhere in the world, spread across 220 acres on the bank of the Ohio River at Clarksville, Indiana, directly across from Louisville. What you are walking on is an ancient sea bottom, and park staff would rather you explored it than pocketed it.

Timing matters more here than at most sites. August through October gives the best access to the beds, because that is when the river runs at its lowest. Come in spring and a good part of what you drove for is underwater.

The interpretive center overlooks the beds and covers both the natural history and the human history of the area, from before settlement through the twentieth century. It charges separately from the park: nine dollars for ages twelve and up, seven for ages five to eleven, under-fives free, with parking two dollars on top. An annual state entrance pass covers the parking but not the center, and even for pass holders it admits only five people per visit, because the fees are still repaying Clarksville for building the place. Park grounds are open daily from seven in the morning to eleven at night.

The site draws about 160,000 people a year, and it has one more claim on your attention: this is where Lewis and Clark met before setting out.