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century by Judge James Costello who
moved there from Florissant, Missouri,
and named his new settlement after the
town he had just left (Meyer, 2003).
The magnificent fossil forest was soon
discovered and reported in local
newspapers, but it was the coming of the
railroad which brought in the first tourists,
who flocked to see not only the fossil
beds but also the delightful summer
wild flowers. Florissant ( 216 ), whose name
derives from the French for 'flowering',
was aptly named.
The impressive, huge fossilized tree
trunks and stumps were a keen target for
fossil hunters who progressively removed
many of the giants, chunk by chunk. The
remains of one failed attempt to saw up
one of the largest stumps can still be seen
as a broken saw-blade jammed into a slot
cut into a petrified trunk known as the Big
Stump ( 217 ), estimated to weigh more
than 60 metric tons (Meyer, 2003). By the
twentieth century, the fossil forest had
become a major tourist attraction, and a
number of local landowners derived
216
216 General view of Florissant
Fossil Beds National
Monument, with outcrop of
Middle Shale Unit and the Big
Stump.
217
217 The Big Stump. Notice the
end of a broken saw blade
protruding from the saw cut,
centre-top of the stump.
 
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