THE CAMERON DINOSAUR TRACKS

The Cameron Dinosaur Tracks are in a remote location on the Navajo Indian Reservation. They are not well-known and nearly impossible to find for there is no road or trail to them. These are not to be confused with the tracks found next to Highway 160 near Tuba City, although they are in the same rock formation and left by the same genus of bipedal dinosaurs. 

The tracks were discovered in 1929 by Goldtooth Semahly, a Navajo shepherd, while searching for his lost sheep. He told Hubert Richardson, the proprietor of the Cameron Indian Trading Post, who shared the information with tourists. 

Word eventually reached Barnum Brown who was a superstar of paleontologists of that era. He was already out west looking for sauropod tracks to include in his exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. When he heard about the tracks he raced to Cameron and hired the Navajo shepherd to guide him to the site. When Brown saw the bird-like therapod tracks he lost interest and left.

Barnum Brown is on the left.

Three years later in 1932 Roland T. Bird, an amateur fossil hunter, was roaming the country on his Harley Davidson motorcycle looking for work. He stopped over in Flagstaff where some locals told him about the giant bird tracks near Cameron. That night Bird went to a motel to rent a room. As he walked through the hotel lobby he saw a pamphlet about the Cameron Dinosaur Tracks with a photo of Barnum Brown standing next to them. The pamphlet said the tracks were in Dinosaur Canyon located sixteen miles east of Cameron.

The next day Bird rode to Cameron and stopped at the trading post to inquire about the tracks. He talked to the owner who told him there wasn't a road or trail to the site and probably gave him some basic directions how to get there. With only the photo on the pamphlet and rudimentary directions Bird took off cross-country on his motorcycle to find the tracks. 

For miles he negotiated the motorcycle through washes and around cliffs until the engine overheated. In the distance he could see some rock piles similar to what was in the photo so he grabbed a canteen of water and took off on foot. By chance, luck and tenacity Bird found the tracks in the afternoon. He studied them until nightfall, then he wandered the desert by starlight until he found his motorbike in the dark. The next morning he left and headed for a fossil bone bed in Wyoming being excavated by none other than Barnum Brown. Brown, within the year, would hire Bird as his field assistant.

Roland T. Bird at the Cameron track site in 1934. 

    

In 2001 I first read about the Cameron Dinosaur Tracks in a book, The Painted Desert - Land of Light and Shadow, that I had purchased at the Petrified Forest National Park.  In it was an account of Roland T. Bird and his search for the tracks.  His adventure so impressed and inspired me that I decided to search for the site myself, but it would be years before I would begin  that journey.

Like Bird, I owned a Harley Davidson motorcycle but mine was not in the least bit suitable for use off the pavement, being overpowered, heavier and lower to the ground.  In 2004 I sold the motorcycle and  bought a Polaris 500 Sportsman quad designed for back country riding.  Over the next few years I bought a trailer and outfitted the quad with a winch and racks on which I could carry gear.

I knew enough about the Painted Desert that it would be too hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter.  I also was aware the colorful layers of rock that make up most of the Painted Desert are actually clay which when wet becomes soft mud.  It's so slick that all traction is lost and so sticky it packs the wheel-well until you can't steer.  I thought the best time to begin my search for the tracks would be in the early spring, after winter snows or rains had dried and before the powerful spring winds carried in the heat of summer.  I ordered a topographical map of the quadrangle and planned out a route.

The directions Bird used to find the tracks was simply, sixteen miles east of Cameron in Dinosaur Canyon. He also had the photo on the hotel pamphlet and some basic directions from Hubert Richardson of which I had neither.

My topo map didn't show any place called Dinosaur Canyon but there were some four wheel drive roads in the vicinity. I thought that eighty years after Bird,someone must have made a 4WD road that led to the tracks. I drew an arc on the map at exactly sixteen miles due east of Cameron. Where the arc intersected a road was where I would look. I entered some way-points on my GPS as markers to follow and felt like I was prepared.

DAY 1, 2008 - THE COW

In 2008 I kept checking the weather forecast for a dry, warm spell and I picked Friday the 21st of March one day after the spring equinox. It had been a mild winter and it would be sunny and 70 degrees in Cameron. I packed the quad with extra fuel, tools, clothing, water, food and survival gear just in case. I loaded the quad on the trailer the night before, left directions with my wife Diane where I intended to go and made the one hour drive north to Cameron early Friday morning.

The Little Colorado River.

I planned to take Indian Route 6730 but it followed the Little Colorado River (LCR) which headed more south than east so at some point I would have to head north.  I rode about sixteen miles and kept watching for a 4WD  road north but didn't see one.  I had passed through several dry washes intersecting the road I was on and noticed some had vehicle tracks in them.  Finally it occurred to me the washes were the Indian 4WD drive roads erased every time the washes flooded with water.  I picked one and headed upstream.

I followed the wash/road for 10 miles or more until it disappeared under some sand dunes.  I started over the sand having a great time when I crested a dune onto the leeward slope and the back wheels sank into the loose, wind-blown sand up to the skid plates.  I looked down at my rear tires spinning and shooting a rooster-tail of grit up into the air.

I hadn't put the quad into four wheel drive before entering the dune field so I switched on the front gear box and gave it some gas.  The rear wheels were already firmly anchored so the front wheels spun and instantly dug down into the soft sand.  Now all four wheels were buried.  There wasn't anything to hook the winch to so I unloaded the gear off of the quad, grabbed the running board with both hands, braced myself and lifted.  I was barely able to tip the quad up sideways, raising the two left wheels out of the sand.  I then did the same on the right side.  I climbed back onto the quad and pulled forward out of the holes I had dug.  I reloaded the gear and continued on in 4WD without any more problems.

I came to the north end of the dune field and saw a faint road heading in the direction I wanted to go.  I followed it toward some small hills off in the distance.  As I got closer they looked like the backbones of huge dinosaurs rising out of the ground.  It tuned out they weren't bones at all but black, petrified logs lying on the crests of the hills.

  

Petrified Logs

The logs were broken up into short segments and some of the rounds had rolled out of line with the trunk.  They were mostly black with veins of white silica laced through them.  Some had knot holes and stubs where branches had broken off.   A knobby bark covered the rounds I thought might have been sharp points 211 million years ago when these logs were still trees standing vertically.

 Some knobs were round while others looked like four sided pyramids.

The largest logs were 60 feet long and over 2 feet in diameter.

Finding the petrified wood got my hopes up that I must be close to the dinosaur tracks. After all, wouldn't fossilized wood and fossil tracks be near each other? I stood on top of a log and looked north and could see a larger hill. The road seemed to be heading for it so I jumped back onto the quad and drove on.

I passed a depression in the earth where wind had blown back the sand and exposed the bedrock. I scoured around for a bit but didn't find anything. I was very close to a waypoint on my GPS and I thought why else would a road come way out here other than to lead me to the tracks?

I continued up the slope of the hill I had seen from the petrified logs. Just as I came over the crest of the hill I saw three animals running away in the distance at hyper-speed, taking great long strides through the brush and rocks desperate to get out of sight. At first I thought they were deer but they didn't look right and just before they disappeared behind a hill I thought they were wild dogs.Then I noticed the stock pond in front of me and two animal carcass'  of bones and flesh rising above the surface of the water.  

The stock pond.

Off to the right I saw a cow lying down at the edge of the pond just watching me.  We stared at each other for a moment then I climbed off the quad and walked toward it but it didn't stand up which I thought was odd.  It just blinked at me as I approached, then I saw why.  It wasn't lying down, it was standing on all four legs which were sunk straight down into the mud.  I had spooked the dogs away from their next meal.

From the pile of excrement  behind the cow I concluded it had been stuck for at least a day maybe two.  I pushed on it's side and it didn't budge.  I tried to reach down into the mud and grab a leg and pull it up.  No success.  I remembered how I had lifted the stuck quad out of the sand earlier but that wasn't going to work here.  This cow had to weight well over a thousand pounds which was much more than my quad did.

I didn't have anything to dig with but I did have a 2,500 pound winch with 100 feet of cable.  I drove the quad about ninety feet in front of the cow.  I was well away from the mud and walked the cable back and hooked it around the base of the cow's horns.  Back at the quad I put it in park and set the brakes.  I wound in the slack and the quad started skidding toward the cow.  I looked at the cow and the winch had pulled it's head down and forced his nose into the mud.  It couldn't breath.  I released the tension on the cable and ran back to the cow and raised it's head.  It took a raspy breath.

I next tried winching the cow from the side and then from behind, but each position twisted it's head around to the side so far that I was afraid I was going to break it's neck. I realized an 850 pound quad wasn't going to pull a 1,200 pound bovine stuck belly deep out of the mud. I needed to anchor the quad but there wasn't a boulder or tree anywhere near by.

I decided to go look for help. I had passed a Hogan (a traditional Navajo dwelling) and a house-trailer next to the road on the drive out here. The Hogan was about five miles away in one direction, and the house-trailer fifteen miles in the opposite direction on the road down by the LCR. It was now mid-afternoon so I would need to hurry.

The Hogan.

I raced to the Hogan where I slowly approached and sat in the yard being polite as was the custom.  No one came out and it quickly became obvious it was uninhabited.  I took off in the other direction, re-crossed the sand dunes and sped down the wash back to the main road.  I found the house-trailer where there were some derelict vehicles in the yard so I honked the horn but no one came to the door.

I sat next to the road for a while hoping a local would drive by.  None did.  I turned on my cell phone and checked for service. Nothing there.  I doubted that even a pick-up could pull the cow out without breaking it's legs.  It would take a tow truck to lift it vertically out of the mud.  How would a tow truck that would likely have to come from Flagstaff get to Cameron, drive up the wash, cross the sand dunes and get the thirty miles out to the cow before dark.  Would the owner, even if he could be found even want to?  All this would have to be done before nightfall and before the predators returned.

I realized a rescue wasn't going to happen.  I drove the fifteen miles back to the stock pond where the cow was stuck.  The entire time I had been near the cow it hadn't twitched, turned it's head or made a sound.  I thought it was already half dead.  I unpacked my pistol, pressed it against its forehead and pulled the trigger.  The cow just dropped its nose back into the mud and couldn't even fall over.  It joined the other animals that had died there.

I stood on the hill and looked around at the landscape.  There was a sea of sand surrounding me and the red cliffs of the Moenkopi Plateau rose up in front of me.  For centuries strong winds had pushed the sand up against the cliffs in such quantities it rose hundreds of feet to the top of the plateau.

The Moenkopi Plateau.

A wind sculpted sand dune.

The stress and adrenaline of euthanizing the animal was enough for me. It was late afternoon and I needed to head back to my truck. When I got there I had traveled nearly 100 miles on the quad that day. I had seen three wild dogs, one cow and not another person or vehicle. I had searched the area sixteen miles east of Cameron and I was certain the tracks were not there. The earth was awash in a sea of sand.

DAY 2, 2010 - LOST IN THE HOODOOS

I didn't return to the Painted Desert for two years and during my hiatus I did some research. I had a large library of geology and paleontology books so I had plenty of material to look through. If I understood the stratigraphy of the area I would know what to expect on the ride and what type of rock in which to search for the tracks. I also bought one book on paleoichnology, the study of trace fossils, otherwise known as dinosaur tracks.

In my books I found two excellent photographs of the tracksite.  One was of R. T. Bird in 1934 and the other taken in 1994 by Louie Psihoyos who at the time was a photojournalist for National Geographic. The photos gave me additional clues I needed to find the tracks.  It wasn't so much the rock formations in the foreground but the landmarks in the background.  Visible were the cliffs of the Moenkopi Plateau in Birds photo and the San Francisco Peaks sixty miles away in Psihoyos.

           

I thought if I could triangulate my position with the landmarks it would put me very close to the tracks. The idea was exhilarating and I made plans for my next trip into the desert.  Again, I watched the weather forecast and chose March  22nd, two years and a day after my first venture into the badlands.

  

This time I brought Ginger, my Border Collie, along to help track for the tracks.

I didn't have any better idea on where the tracks were but I did know where they weren't and that would narrow my search area.  My plan was to ride the same road, Indian Route 6730, then take a different dry wash highway to get back to the stock tank where I had euthanized the cow.  I didn't really need to go there but I was curious what remained.  Then I would work my way along a 4WD road I had noticed on my map that ran parallel to the Adeii Eechii cliffs of the Moenkopi Plateau.

One of the dry wash highways.

I turned off of the dirt road and followed vehicle tracks up a wash headed for the hills known as Ward Terrace. After several miles the hills rose around me and I came to a vertical cliff about twenty feet tall. Capping the top of the cliff was a hard layer of limestone several feet thick. This was the Owl Rock Member, the top most layer of the Chinle Formation that makes up much of the colorful rock strata of the Painted Desert. From my research I knew above the limestone was the Wingate sandstone, then the Moenave mudstone and shale above that where the dinosaur tracks would be found.

Water steadily dripped out of the cliff face from underneath the limestone ledge into a small pool. Many  animal tracks led to the pool and bees drank from its edge. This could be a source of clean water in case of an emergency so I marked it on the GPS.

The vehicle tracks had disappeared about a mile before so I backtracked until I found where they left the wash. I rode out of the wash up a steep bank and found a two-track road. In about a mile it rejoined the wash above the cliff. As I continued up the wash I left the hills behind and I came to a faint road crossing the wash. I turned right and headed for the stock tank.

After several miles I again pulled up on top of the dirt berm and looked at the pond. All the carcass' were gone either dragged away by predators or the water was higher and they were submerged under the surface. With nothing to see I turned around and headed back the way I had just come. 

I rode for several miles watching the plateau on my right with steep canyons and sand dunes piled up against up its face. Red stone hoodoo's began to rise above the sand and I watched for flat exposures of bedrock. I climbed up a rock outcrop and surveyed the view. It was the most barren and empty land I had ever seen. It was no wonder I hadn't come across any people. 

The Badlands.

The Three Watchmen.

 I scrambled around three hoodoo towers looking for tracks but found none.  I named the hoodoos the Three Watchmen.  Across a great sand dune I could see more rock piles off to the north.  I crossed the dune and came to a canyon surrounded by hoodoos.

Ginger rests in the shade under the quad.

It looked similar to the rocks I had seen in the photos and on the drive in I had seen the Peaks and the Plateau.  I knew the  tracks wouldn't be in the hoodoos.  They would be in level rock on the canyon floor between the hoodoos.  I would just have to explore each canyon as I came to it.  It was hot in the sun so I found a rock overhang and sat in the shade beneath it and ate some lunch. 

I put a water bottle and my camera into a pack and started up the first canyon.  After a few hundred yards of walking over sand it dead-ended in a box canyon.  I wondered if there might be another level higher up that I would  have to climb to.  I decided that wasn't likely and being alone not a good idea either.

 

The box end of Box Canyon.

I walked back down the box canyon past the quad, trudged up and over the sand dune and down into the next canyon.  It was wider and I hoped I might find some bedrock.  I followed it on up and around a corner.  It split into two more canyons and I took the right branch.  I walked until the canyon split again into two more narrower canyons.  There was so much sand everywhere I was concerned that over the years the tracks might have been buried and I would walk right over them and not ever see them.

As I wandered deeper into the canyon the hoodoos grew taller and I lost sight of the plateau and the San Francisco Peaks.  It was obvious this was another dead-end.  I stopped and looked back the way I had walked into the canyon and I couldn't tell where the opening was.  It seemed as if the mouth of the canyon had closed in behind me.  In every direction I was surrounded by hoodoos that looked like a huge crowd of grotesque creatures staring at me.  It was spooky.  I opened my pack to mark my location on the GPS and couldn't find it.  Then I remembered I had left it attached to the quad handlebars.  Not smart.  I followed Ginger and my own tracks through the deep, hot sand back out of the canyons.  The hoodoos stared at me with stone-faced expressions as I left.

The Monkey and The Chicken watching me.

 

When I got back to the quad it was late afternoon.  I still had many miles to ride back to Cameron so I left.  I hadn't found the tracks and I wasn't feeling very confident I would find them.

On the long ride back I saw the tip of a white bone sticking out of a sand bank.  I stopped and pulled it free from its gritty tomb.  It was a horse's skull  picked clean and sandblasted by the wind.  I strapped it onto the hood of the quad. 

On the way back to the truck I rode by Espejo Spring.  It was much larger than the dripping spring I had found that morning, and it also seeped out of the ground from underneath the Owl Rock Limestone.  It was obviously a reliable water source.  There was a herd of about twenty cattle and one llama looking quite out of place but acting right at home as if one of the cows.

Cows and one llama with an identity crisis.



After I saw the livestock I realized they were wild, either animals that had escaped from their pens or descendants of ones that had.  I hadn't seen any fencing except for next to the highway through Cameron.  None of those animals had brands or ear tags and it dawned on me the cow stuck in the pond hadn't either.

Espejo (mirror) Spring

I was only a mile from Cameron when I saw a man on horseback riding up the wash.  I gave him a wide birth because  I didn't want to spook the horse with the quad or Ginger barking at them but he started waving at me to come to him.  As I pulled up I shut off the quad and coasted to a stop.  I saw it was a Navajo Elder.

He politely asked me, "What are you doing here?"

I told him, "Taking photographs and looking for dinosaur tracks."

He told me about the tracks up near Tuba City but he didn't know about any others. 

He stated, "Don't pick up anything." 

I assumed he meant Indian artifacts which I hadn't and I paused as I thought about the skull strapped to the front of the quad.  I pointed at the horse head and asked him, "Do you want that back?"

He started laughing and exclaimed, "You can keep that!"

He then asked if I had a permit to be on the reservation which I didn't. I replied, "I didn't know I needed one," then I asked, "How would I get one?"

He answered, "The Visitors Center in Cameron has them." 

I told him I would get one the next time I came back.

He seemed satisfied with that and held up his hand and said, "Goodbye," then turned his horse and rode away up the wash.

2010 - RESEARCH

For the first time I used a computer to mine the internet for information about the tracks.  Right away I found out Roland T. Bird had written a series of manuscripts collected in a book, Bones for Barnum Brown, posthumously published by his colleagues and friends in 1985.  Although the book was out-of-print I bought a used copy online through Amazon Books.

I also found a research paper by Grace Irby in the Journal of Paleontology about the Cameron Dinosaur Tracksite.  It described the morphology of the tracks in detail, and gave some history about the site itself.  After Bird had visited the tracks a second time in 1934, it was forgotten and lost for 52 years.  Then in 1986, Scott Madsen, a paleontologist at the Museum of Northern Arizona, came cross Byrd's story and relocated the site.  He documented the exact location of the tracks in his field report on file at the museum.

Scott Madsen at the tracks in 1986.

Eureka! I live only a few miles from the Museum of Northern Arizona. I could read or get a copy of the report and find out exactly where the tracks were. At this point I want to explain something; my original intention had been to find the tracks using only the sketchy directions and two photographs, much like Bird had. It made it more of an adventure. But, it was proving to be extremely difficult because the directions appeared to be incorrect.

Every paper, article and book I had found about the tracks said they were located either 15 or 16 miles east of Cameron. I had been there and I knew the tracks were not there in sand-land. I came to realize this was intentional misdirection by paleontologists to protect the tracks from theft or vandalism. Instantly the search area became enormous and the fact that I had broken bones in both feet was making it painful to walk. That's a different story but more on that later. That being said, I was willing to accept some directions.

I drove to the museum and went to the gift shop and book store. I inquired of the cashier where I might find Scott Madsen's field report.  She suggested I try the geology department in a building across the  highway.  It was to far to walk so I drove across the highway and up a winding dirt road through a confusing assortment of buildings with a frustrating lack of signage.  After the second trip around the driveway I spotted a small wooden sign identifying what looked like an old elementary school as the Geology Department.

I parked and walked to the front glass door.  I opened it and stepped into a small foyer that opened up into two long hallways, one straight in front of me and the other one to the left.  There were closed doors staggered down both sides of the halls.  The waxed concrete floor, the faded yellow paint on the walls and the echo of the door latching closed behind me clinched it, I had stepped through a time warp and was back in grade school.  I half expected to see Mrs. Baker, my first grade teacher, walking toward me with a ruler in her hand, with her black hair pulled back in a tight bun and the sound of her heels clicking on the hard, polished floor. 

Where I expected a desk with a receptionist sitting behind it, was a large glass display case full of unique stones and interesting fossils.  I came back to the present as I admired the display.  I noticed not a sound or anyone in the building and I thought it deserted.  I called out, "Hello" and my voice echoed down both halls.  No one answered and I was about to turn and leave when I heard a voice and saw a head poke out of a doorway at the end of one hall on the right.  A man stepped into the hall and walked towards me.  The sun shown through a large window at the end of hall behind him, so all I could see was his black silhouette approaching me.

As he stepped up to me I introduced myself and he replied, "David Gillette."
I told him I was looking for Scott Madsen's report on the Cameron Dinosaur Tracks. 
He asked me, "Who are you with?"
Meaning what school or institute was I working for.  I explained I didn't have any accreditation and I had been looking for the tracks for three years, like Roland T. Bird I was an amateur on an adventure.  He politely apologized and said he couldn't let me see the report.

Then I noticed a large poster hanging on the wall behind Mr. Gillette.  I recognized it from an exhibit that had been at the museum a few years before.  My wife and I had gone to the showing and I told him how much we had enjoyed it.  I thought it was as good as displays I had seen at the large natural history museums in New York, Philadelphia  and Chicago.    

A big smile appeared on his face and he exclaimed with obvious pride, "I built that exhibit!" 
We talked for quite a while about Therizinosaur and his work excavating the fossil and how he assembled the exhibit.  I asked when it would be coming back to the museum in Flagstaff but with disappointment he told me it had been dismantled and scattered to other museums in Utah.

Plateau Magazine cover art, fall 2007.  

Museum of Northern Arizona.

It seemed time for me to go so I thanked him and I started to leave.  He stopped me and said, "Wait."  He walked down the hall to a closed door, unlocked it and went in.  I looked into the room filled with file cabinets where he was rummaging through a drawer.  He pulled out a manila folder and thumbed through it until he found something.  He pulled out a sheet of paper, came over and handed it to me.  It was part of an old topographical map with a dense thicket of contour lines and place names.  Drawn onto the map was an arrow pointing to a tiny circle with the word "Wash" written next to it.

I instantly knew what it was and excitedly asked him, "Can I have this?"
He replied, "You can have a copy of it," and walked to a copy machine in the corner of the room and made a duplicate. 
He walked back and handed it to me and said, "I've never been there.  Don't tell anyone where it is."
I agreed, shook his hand and gratefully thanked him again.  As I left I called back to him, "I'll let you know what I find."

The map.

When I got home I compared my map to Scott Madsen's map.  My topo had half the resolution of Madsen's so it wasn't much good.  I went to my computer and opened an online map site. I found a higher resolution map and studied it until I found the matching contour lines.  I moved the cursor to the location where the circle was indicated on the Madsen map and the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates appeared on the screen.  I wrote them down and entered the waypoint on my GPS.  Now all I had to do was wait until spring of next year.

When I met David Gillette at the museum his name seemed familiar so I looked him up on the computer.   Dr. David Gillette is the Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona.  He was the author of the featured article about therizinosaur in the fall edition of Plateau Magazine in 2007, which I had read.  I didn't remember this when I met him.  He was also the editor of Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, a book on ichnology, already in my library.

 DAY 3, 2011 - THE TRACKS

I called the Cameron Visitors Center about a permit.  I asked about their hours and was told they opened at 9 am during the week and were closed on weekends.  I arrived at the visitors center on Friday morning on April 15th, 2011 shortly before 9 am.  I sat outside in my truck and at 9:15 it still hadn't opened.  There was a tourist business next door that was open so I went in and asked a pretty young Indian woman behind the counter if she knew when the visitor center would open? 

Cameron Visitors Center.

She told me,  "They could be on Arizona time which is 9, or they could be on Reservation time which is an hour later, but depending on what side of the street they are on makes a difference too, or they could just be running late."  I reflected on that for a moment then I slowly replied, "Okay." I had a thought and asked, "What do they do during daylight savings time? They could open at 9, 10 or 11."

She smiled and said, "They probably just stay home."

I thanked her and when back and sat in my truck until someone showed up at 10.  With my permit in hand I went and offloaded the quad and rode down Indian Route 6730 again.  I would explore the area adjacent to where I had left off last year.  I turned off the road into a different wash this time.  I don't like always going the same way, it's how I learn to find my way around.  It drives my wife nuts.

The thin air takes a while for the sun to warm it up.

I followed a convoluted route up a series of washes.  As I came to each branch I would stop and mark it on my GPS, giving it a number and if  I had turned right or left.  On the leeward side of a tall sand dune I came to an obstruction of tumble weeds that had blown into the wash.  It is an invasive species of nuisance plant inadvertently imported to America by Russian emigrants in the 1870's.  It has come to symbolize the old west and desert environments and is a real pain-in-the-ass to drive through, which I did at the first two small piles I came to.

Stopped by tumble weeds.

The third barrier of tumble weeds I was confronted with was six feet deep and a  hundred yards long.  I didn't want to drive through the thorny balls with the possibility of them jamming up the drive line and getting stuck, or the engine exhaust somehow starting them on fire.  Either one would be a disaster so I parked it, grabbed my pack and started walking. 

 

I came to a shale cliff made up of thousands of layers of stone just millimeters thick.  Each layer representing seasonal and yearly changes of muddy brown water or white aeolian sands.  This was a good sign.  I had read the tracks had been left in a layer of mudstone deposited 205 million years ago.  

I found a way around the cliff and into a wash cut down through flat ledges of stone.  I looked for tracks as I ascended each ledge.   I came to another cliff and I scrambled up a steep slope next to it.  From my new vantage point I stopped and looked around me. 

I could see the snowy San Francisco Peaks to the south and the Moenkopi Plateau to the north just like the in the two photos I carried.  The hoodoos were similar but changed by decades of erosion.  I knew the tracks had to be close by and I  walked to a nearby flat area covered with sand and gravel.  I didn't see any tracks but I noticed something yellow partly covered by sand.  I brushed the sand away with my hand and there was a faded yellow X painted on the rock beneath.  It was a marker for a tripod or taking measurements.  

"X" really does marks the spot.

I had a whisk broom in my pack so I pulled it out and swept away more sand.  There was a very bird-like three-toed print about six inches long in the rock.   

The first track I found.

I was suddenly ecstatic and yelled out a loud, "Yes," and pumped my fist.  I pulled out my GPS and checked the coordinates I had approximated from the Madsen map.  My waypoint was only 20 feet off and just 600 feet from where I had sat in the shade and eaten lunch the year before.  I got to work cleaning off the tracks the best I could with my tiny broom until I was dripping with sweat.  I stopped and got a drink water then poured it into some tracks so they would show up better and started taking photos.    

Dozens of dinosaurs had crossed a mud flat in the early Jurassic 205,000,000 years ago.

 Ripple marks surround this 14" dilophosaurus print, one of the best preserved tracks at the site.

 

Several dilophosaurus fossils have been exhumed from Northern Arizona rocks.

 

I doubt this pistol could have stopped the dinosaur that left this track.

 Dilophosaurus wetherille

  A smaller track possibly from a coelophysis.

  

  Coelophysis kayentakatae.

     

There are three features that make the Cameron Dinosaur Tracks unique:  the density of tracks in a small area, a tail imprint in the rock, and there are tracks of two dinosaurs where one appears to be chasing the other.

Tail imprint 3" wide by 18" long.

 A dilophosaurus appeared to have been chasing a smaller coelophysis.

With a stride of 8 feet it was running between 15 and 20 miles per hour.

 I spent several hours at the track site, exploring the surrounding area and

shooting photographs of somber hoodoos with weird rock hats. 

I stayed back from balanced rocks on top of balanced rocks, seemingly ready to fall.

This boulder was perched on a spire so impossibly thin I thought the next breath of wind could topple it.

I climbed on top of a ridge and took a 180 degree photograph of the sculpted landscape.  Over 200 million years ago it was part of a river system that probably flowed only during the rainy season.  

A parting photo. 

When Roland T. Bird found the site in 1932 he counted three hundred tracks.  At that time they were distinct, deep, impressions in the rock and easily seen.  In the eighty-six years since they were first discovered, and uncovered, over half of them have eroded to the point I couldn't find them. Erosion is fierce in sand-land,  powerful  winds and freezing rains eat away at the soft sandstone rock at a ferocious rate.  As fast as the hoodoos may fall new ones form and scowl for the next photograph.

   

Exposing the tracks, however fascinating they are, has lead to their demise.  It appears that at least three have been pried up and removed, either by paleontologists or stolen.  In another one hundred years they will erode away as completely as the creatures that left them.  I scattered sand and gravel back over the site before I left in the hope it would help protect the tracks from further erosion, theft or vandalism.  I think it was a futile effort.

As I drove down the wash back towards my truck I saw a jackrabbit watching me from the brush.  It made a few hops toward me and didn't run away like every other jack I had ever come across.  I stopped and we both sat there looking at each other from fifteen feet apart.  That rabbit wasn't afraid of me because it didn't know if it should be.  I don't believe it had ever seen a human before.  

On the drive home I was feeling rather melancholy.  I knew my adventure had been the journey and reaching the destination meant the mystery of it was over.  In the last four years I had spent countless hours searching for information and reading articles and books about the Painted Desert and the Cameron Dinosaur Tracks.  I had spent three days in the desert looking for them and driven over two hundred miles through washes and over faint, nearly nonexistent roads.  In all those miles I had come across wild dogs, a doomed cow, a lost llama, a fearless jackrabbit and one Navajo man on horseback.  It was wonderful.    

EPILOGUE

The result of an injury decades ago, in October of 2011 and August of 2012 I had surgery to repair broken bones in both of my feet.  For eight months I couldn't walk so I used a knee scooter to get around.  It worked well as long as I kept on smooth pavement and concrete.

I went back to the Museum of Northern Arizona and tried to drive up to the geology building, but a storm drain  was being put in underground.  There were deep, wide trenches and piles of dirt blocking the entrance to the building.  I had to lift, roll and step the knee scooter through a field of soft dirt and mud to get to the back door.  Dr. Gillette was quite surprised to see me and helped me up the steps and into his office.  I thanked him for his help and trust in giving me the map and presented him with the GPS coordinates how to reach the tracksite and its exact location. 

Like the paleontologists before me that gave intentional misdirection to protect the tracks, I continue their tradition. I have only given a general area where they are and have omitted facts, directions, distances and altered photos in this story to keep the exact location of the tracks secret.  I did this so only the most determined and tenacious souls who would respect the tracks might find them.

Mark t.