I was
sent to Como in November of 1877 from Canyon City. I got off the train
at the station after midnight, and enquired for the nearest
hotel--(the station comprised two houses only), and where I could find
Messrs. Smith and Robinson. I was told that the section house was the
only hotel in the place and that these gentlemen lived in the country
and that there was no regular bus-line yet running to their ranch. A
freshly opened box of cigars, however, helped clear up things, and I
joined Mr. Reed the next day in opening "Quarry No. 1" of the Como
hills. Inasmuch as the mercury in the thermometer during the next two
months seldom reached zero--upward I mean--the opening of this famous
deposit was made under difficulties. That so much "head cheese," as we
called it, was shipped to Professor Marsh was more the fault of the
weather and his importunities than our carelessness. However, we found
some of the types of dinosaurs that have since become famous.
I joined Professor Lakes at the Morrison quarry in early September of
1877, and helped dig out some of the bones of _Atlantosaurus_. A few
weeks later I was sent to Canyon City to help Professor Mudge, my old
teacher, and Mr. Felch, who had begun work there in the famous "Marsh
Quarry". It was here that we found the type of _Diplodocus_.
The hind leg, pelvis and much of the tail of this specimen lay in very
orderly arrangement in the sandstone near the edge of the quarry, but
the bones were broken into innumerable pieces.
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