![]() ![]() Then travel 20 miles down a well-maintained gravel road to reach the U-DIG Quarry. ![]() There is a U-DIG Fossils sign at this intersection. At the Long Ridge Reservoir sign between mile markers 56-57, turn right. Once in Delta, first travel 32 miles west on Highway 6 / 50. It is approximately 130 miles from Salt Lake City to Delta. It is approximately 90 miles from Provo to Delta. Please do not attempt to enter the quarry when it is closed.ĭirections– The U-DIG Fossils Quarry is located approximately 52 miles west of Delta, Utah, near Antelope Springs. Please arrive at the quarry before 4 PM because the quarry will close early if no one is present at 4 p.m. If you get there early just wait for us at the gate and we will be there promptly.īusiness hours are Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. Please feel free to call to make sure what days we are open, and check the calendar just in case. “Closed on Sundays and 4 July, we are open on most holidays except for Sundays”. We will be open 6 days closed on Sunday, hours of operation 9 AM – 6 PM. It is always good to bring a spare tire as well. Please bring a container to transport your fossils home. Remember to bring plenty of food and water. It is adviseable to bring a pair of gloves (garden gloves are sufficient), safety glasses and a light jacket in the event there is a change of weather. We spoke with Shayne Crapo who runs the U-Dig Fossils quarry. The Bug House isn’t just about trilobites, in fact, their bigger business is in two beautiful crystal specimens: Septarian nodules and Dugway geodes. After Loy passed away, his widow, sons, daughters, and their families continued the Bug House business and do so until today. For the next 12 years of so, Loy Crapo, whose business is called The Bug House, supplied us with a variety of Elrathia kingii fossils of various sizes and levels of completion. We met and worked with the patriarch of the family in 2005. The Crapo family runs the U-Dig Fossil Site. We recommend you keep an eye on the temperatures, because this is the desert and by late morning temperatures can be brutal. We arrived at the quarry late in the morning on what was a pretty hot summer day. To be fair, we didn’t spend much time splitting rocks. On the day we visited, several really nice whole trilobites were found…but not by us. It’s fairly common to find pieces of incomplete trilobites. When you arrive at the quarry, you’re handed a bucket and a hammer to help gently tap on the shale to split the layers. This species, the Elrathia Kingii, shows up between layers of the shale. Trilobites were prolific inhabitants of the Cambrian seas that covered the planet. The quarry is literally acres of Wheeler Shale, laid down during the Cambrian Period approximately 507 million years ago. ![]() U-Dig Fossils near Delta, Utah in western Millard County. If going to U-dig Fossils they will provide all the tools you need to find fossils.How’d you like to split an ordinary-looking gray rock and find this beauty? You can at.Lots of water, especially in the summer months However, the U-dig quarry does have toilet facilities if you pay to find fossils. The closest amenities are about an hour away in Delta, UT. There are no bathrooms or water on BLM land.Especially when you are in a paid quarry where there are more fossils. Personally, I think 2 hours is plenty of time to fossil hunt. Prices at U-dig Fossils (as of April 2021):Ģ Hours – Ages 7 to 16: $19 Age 17 and older: $33Ĥ hours – Ages 7 to 16: $33 Age 17 and older: $49Ĩ hours – Ages 7 to 16: $58 Age 17 and older: $90Īges 6 and under are free with a paying adult However, other blogs have mentioned that the overall fossil quality is better there than on the BLM land. We went fossil hunting when U-dig wasn’t open so I can’t speak to the success of fossil finding there. This private, 40 acre quarry provides tools and instructions on fossil hunting. There is a paid option up the road about a mile from the BLM land called U-dig Fossils. When to Go: Spring, Summer (morning or evening), Fall COSTįree on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land. Difficulty: Very Easy Easy MODERATE Hard Very Hard ![]()
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