BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – A slice of history is defying the odds to become a Vermont landmark.
Thousands of visitors pass through Isle La Motte every summer to see the fossils lining its shores. But before the ancient impressions were frozen in time, they were the center of a heated battle between past and present.
Anthony Fowler of Isle La Motte Preservation Trust is a tour guide at Goodsell Ridge. But before that, he was a little boy tagging along with a researcher studying fossils at the farm across from his house.
“I was just fascinated by what he was doing, how he was mapping these rocks, and the techniques that he was using. And as a little kid, I had no idea that somebody could spend their life studying fossils,” said Fowler.
Today, Fowler does just that – leading tours of the fossils of trilobites, cephalopods, sponges, and other organisms that roamed the Chazy Reef over 450 million years ago.
“It’s part of my motivation to give the field trips in the zone, to get young people interested in earth sciences,” he said.
Fowler’s fossils almost didn’t make it into the 21st century. Several decades ago, the ridge and nearby Fisk Quarry Preserve – another remnant of Chazy Reef – were slated for quarrying and development.
Isle La Motte Preservation Trust founder Linda Fitch remembers hearing the news.
“One day I heard loud sounds and I went over, and in this old abandoned quarry, there was drilling. And I said, ‘what’s going on?’ ‘Oh, big quarry operation going to start here.’ In a quarry that hadn’t been drilled since the 1920s. That was kind of horrifying,” Fitch said.
Eager to save the piece of the past, Fitch, local advocates, and the Isle La Motte Preservation Trust campaigned to rescue the ridge. It worked – leaving the landmark for generations to ponder.
“I did have an interest in what was around me, and certainly I didn’t want to live next door to a drilling operation,” said Fitch.
Everyone who visits the ridge – from local students to tourists – gets tours and lessons from Fowler and Fitch.
“The eyes are so tuned in and so bright. They saw everything, they just love it,” said Fowler.
“I hope they take away a sense of awe, a sense of wonder, and that perhaps they pursue this even as amateurs throughout their lives,” said Fitch.
Fowler says he hopes to inspire a sense of wonder about the place we call home, and perhaps persuade more kids to study science.
“If we don’t know the planet that we’re living on, there’s a lot of other things we don’t know,” he said.
Fowler will lead tours of the ridge all summer.