Asked whether you can keep what you find, Penn Dixie answers in one word: yes. They do not restrict or limit what may be collected. The only thing they ask is that if you turn up something really unusual you send them a photo for the website. For a site of this quality that is an unusually generous position, and it is the reason this place is worth a detour.
The centrepiece is a fossil quarry that a scientific study ranked first in the United States. What it exposes is a shallow ocean environment from almost 400 million years ago, and the animal everybody wants is the trilobite Eldredgeops rana. Penn Dixie are straight about the odds: rana is fairly common if you know where to look, but finding a complete one, let alone several in a single rock, is a real challenge. That gap between common and complete is what keeps people coming back.
The operation was founded in 1993 under the Hamburg Natural History Society to promote the study of natural sciences in western New York, and 2026 is its thirty-first season. Beyond the quarry there are nature trails, a wetlands area, and programming that runs well past geology into ecology, astronomy and ornithology.
Practicalities. The site is at 4050 North Street in Blasdell, open to the public Wednesday to Sunday, nine in the morning until half past four. It is private property and it is patrolled: non-members may not visit when the site is closed, and trespassers are prosecuted. Members can come at any time provided they follow the member guide.
Local visitors get a break worth knowing about. Through August, on Trilobite Thursdays, residents of Erie County take five dollars off admission.
Trilobites, brachiopods, corals · Devonian, ~380 mya
A commercial or managed site. You pay for access, and what you turn up is yours. Book ahead where the site asks for it.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
