Stonerose Interpretive Center

You may keep three fossils a day. That is the rule at Stonerose, and it is a fair one: you dig in the Eocene beds, you show everything you find to the staff for identification, and anything scientifically important stays with the collection while you walk out with three.

The site was found in 1977 by the artist Wesley Wehr and Kirk Johnson, then a Seattle high school student. The centre grew out of conversations in the mid-1980s between Wehr and Bert Chadick, a Republic city councillor who had noticed Wehr collecting fossils near the city hall. What the two of them argued for was unusual: that a small former mining town could build something on letting the public dig a world-class fossil site alongside the researchers studying it, and that important science can happen anywhere. The city bought a turn-of-the-century house, funded a curator, and opened in August 1987 with glass cases for the collection. Madilane Perry, an anthropology graduate fresh from a museology course, took the curator job after warning that the project might be impossible on the resources available. A larger and more accessible site turned up soon afterwards, uncovered by residents digging for fill rock at the north end of town.

The name is a nod to the rose-family fossils that come out of the stone. What else comes out is Eocene lake bed: leaves, insects, fish. Finds from here have appeared in National Geographic and in the scientific literature, and the operation became a non-profit in 1989 with a state grant behind the Friends of Stonerose Fossils.

Republic is the seat of Ferry County, the least densely populated county in Washington at a little over three people per square mile, carved out of Stevens County in 1899 and built historically on gold, timber and agriculture. The interpretive centre is downtown on the corner of Highway 20 and Clark Avenue. Admission to the centre is free; the fossil site is charged separately.

The dig charges a fee and runs seasonally.