East of the Ochocos, midway across Oregon, the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument documents many millions of years of prehistoric life, from thundering dinosaurs to delicate plants. Discovered in the 1860s by a frontier preacher and amateur geologist named Thomas Condon, the beds contain one of the world’s richest and most diverse concentrations of mammalian and dinosaur fossils. Offering a complete and easily accessible record of life on earth, spanning some 50 million years, the monument is made up of three distinct units, totaling some 14,000 acres. Needless to say, fossil collecting is strictly prohibited in the park.
The eerie, empty moonscape can be easily toured from US-26. Start in the west with the Painted Hills Unit, just west of Mitchell, then six miles north of US-26, where trails and overlooks offer views of striated hills and bluffs formed by fallen ash and brilliantly colored in bands of red, pink, black, and bronze. A life-sized Georgia O’Keeffe landscape, Painted Hills is a popular spot with photographers and painters, especially the short Painted Cove trail, which winds through the most intensely colored section.
About 30 miles east of Mitchell, six miles west of Dayville along US-26, then three miles north on Hwy-19, the Sheep Rock Unit is the best place to see fossils in their natural state; the monument headquarters and a small museum are also here, housed inside the Cant Ranch Visitor Center (541/987-2333). East of the turnoff to the Sheep Rock fossil beds, US-26 runs right along the John Day River through the 500-foot-deep basalt canyon of Picture Gorge, so named because of the abundance of Native American pictographs.
