Agate Fossil Beds National Monument ⓘ

Don't let the name fool you. Agate Fossil Beds National Monument features more than world-class fossil exhibits. One of our most surprising discoveries is the Cook Collection, and it has nothing at all to do with fossils.

The Cook Collection consists of Native American artifacts the Cook family received in the late 1800s and early 1900s from close family friends like Red Cloud, Chief of the Oglala Lakota.

James H. Cook first arrived in western Nebraska in the early 1870s. He worked as a cattle driver, or cowboy, for a Texas outfit. The 17-year-old's chance meeting with a 53-year-old Red Cloud didn't happen until 1874. It was arranged by Baptiste "Little Bat" Garnier, a mutual friend. As the story goes, fossils played a vital role in that meeting. O.C. Marsh, a Yale University paleontologist, was hoping to collect fossils from north of the Red Cloud Agency, near present-day Fort Robinson State Park. According to James, who'd previously learned Indian sign as well as some of the Sioux's spoken language, he met and spoke with Red Cloud and other Lakota leaders on behalf of Marsh. In addition to exposing him to fossils, this chance encounter between James and Red Cloud developed into a friendship that lasted until the Red Cloud's death in 1909. The friendship between the well-known Chief and his people after 1887 led them to visit James Cook at Agate Springs Ranch in Niobrara County. It was a 150-mile journey by horse and wagon from the Pine Ridge Reservation. To come and go from reservation, they needed a pass from the reservation agent. They stayed at the ranch, erecting tipis on the flats east of the Cook's home. The Lakota also helped around the ranch by hunting game, tanning hides under trees near their house while sharing stories of life's adventures which they had shared together before.

It was during these visits, too, that the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and others gave gifts to James and his family, often in return for receiving beef and hides they later tanned and painted. Some of these gifts were made especially for the Cooks, including buckskin suits for James' sons Harold and John, gloves, and the painted hide showing the Battle of Greasy Grass, also known as Custer's Last Stand. Other items—Red Cloud's shirt, three generations of the Red Clouds' pipe bags (one each belonging to Red Cloud, his father, and his son), and one of Crazy Horse's whetstones—were very special to those who gave them to James. James and his descendants believed these gifts should remain in the vicinity of the family home. They were presented to the National Park Service after James' son Harold passed away in the 1960s. When the current visitor center was built in the early 1990s, two rooms were dedicated to the James H. Cook Collection. One room introduces visitors to the ranch and the culture of the Oglala Lakota, while the second, a light- and climate-controlled room, displays many of the most important gifts. Historic photos exhibited along with these items illustrate the story of the friendship that developed between the Cooks, Red Cloud, and their families.

Mary Eliza Graham moved from Three Rivers, MI to Cheyenne, WY with her husband, Dr. E. B. Graham, and two daughters for his health in 1861. As most young women of that age she had learned to spin and weave and dye and sew the woven cloth, she cooked and preserved all the products grown on her family’s farm, made candles, churned butter and many other tasks that served her well in her move west. She was active in the woman’s suffrage movement with Susan B. Anthony.

When Graham homesteaded on the Niobrara River the family spent time between the O4 Ranch and Cheyenne. Mary and the two daughters, Clara and Kate, were the first women to make a permanent home in Sioux County. She later lived with her daughter Kate and James Cook after he bought the ranch and renamed it Agate Springs Ranch. She managed the household for many years, led religious services for cowboys on the ranch. She delivered babies and nursed pioneer mothers through the critical time of childbirth. Mrs. Graham typified the finest in pioneer women, bringing with her beauty, kindliness, self-sacrifice, devotion, and a pride in maintaining the best in family life, home-making and loyalty and faith in those she loved. In 1892 Mrs. Graham became the first Postmaster at the Agate Post Office and kept the first official weather station at Agate.

Her last years were spent in California near her oldest daughter, Clara Heath. Her remarkable vitality, inherited from her pioneer ancestors prolonged her life to a great age of 96. Mary Eliza Hutchinson Graham is one of America’s great women in history.

Kate Graham, the younger daughter of Dr. E. B. and Mary Graham, was a scholar and musician and taught herself French. She married James Cook, an adventurer and forward thinking man whom the family met in Cheyenne. Kate and James first lived in New Mexico on a ranch that he managed then came back to Sioux County where they bought the ranch from her father and changed the name to Agate Springs Ranch. She had found fossils near the Agate Fossil Hills and shared that with James who later contacted the early paleontologists. They had two sons, Harold and John, and she ran the household and raised the two boys facing wolves, rattlesnakes, and ranch debt until she became ill in 1909. She was quite a horsewoman and once rode a bucking horse, sidesaddle, down the streets of Cheyenne. The family rode together at the ranch where Kate sometimes rode Billy American Horse, a gift from American Horse.

Eleanor Barbour was an educated woman, with passions in geology, paleontology, and music. She was raised in a scientifically active household, after all. She was the daughter of E.H. Barbour, Director of the Nebraska State Museum at the University of Nebraska. Through her father, she met and later married Harold Cook, son of James Cook. Harold and his father owned and operated the Agate Springs Ranch, home of the fossil beds the Park Service now protects.

She had a distinguished record at the University and had studied abroad. The years that Harold and Eleanor were married and lived in “Agate East,” where the monument sits today were the heyday of fossil collecting at the quarries.

Eleanor threw herself into her complex role at Agate – part housewife and mother, part scientific peer -- with intelligence and humor. Later, she taught English, Geology, and Paleontology at Nebraska State Normal College in Chadron (now called Chadron State College). She worked in the field and took her students on excursions to the Agate Fossil Hills. At the request of College President Robert Elliott, she helped gather geologic and paleontological material to open their Museum of Geology. She became curator of that museum, which later became The Eleanor Barbour Cook Museum of Geology, which still inspires and educates college students and the public today. Harold and Eleanor Cook’s four daughters, Eleanor Jr., Dorothy, Winifred and Margaret were all interested in the fossils found at the ranch and helped the paleontologists in the quarries. Two of them married geologists/paleontologists and Margaret and her husband George ranched on the Niobrara River in sight of the Agate Fossil Hills. Dorothy and her husband Grayson lived in the ranch house in the late 70’s where she wrote The Story of Agate Springs Ranch, History of the Agate Post Office and Heartbags and Handshakes about the Cook Collection. All four girls were educated at the University of Nebraska and were musically inclined.

Eleanor Barbour Cook’s aunt Carrie was a small woman and not very robust. She was discouraged against taking college courses, so studied at an art school and taught wood carving and china painting. During her free time she assisted at the museum that she and her brother Erwin formed. Fossils fascinated her and through her collaboration with Erwin she became a “preparatory” of fossil specimens that arrived from the field. Working on slabs of sandstone and clay she dug the bones from them, fitting together with expert fingers the shattered fragments of bone. She also wrote articles for scientific journals about the expeditions of the University of Nebraska. She passed away in 1942 after 49 years in the field of paleontology.

After a long, varied, and interesting life, James Cook died in 1942, at the age of 85. Fifty Years on the Old Frontier , his 1923 autobiography published by Yale University Press, records many of James' memories of life and adventure in the West. The book is available for sale today in the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument bookstore.

James and Kate's first son, Harold James Cook, was born July 31, 1887 in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He exhibited an early interest in science, especially paleontology, perhaps fostered by the fossil beds on the ranch. Harold's fossil collecting began in 1892 when he helped Erwin H. Barbour of the University of Nebraska remove a large Daemonelix near the Agate Springs Ranch home. Unidentified skeletal parts were later determined to be pieces of Syndyoceros cooki, named in honor of the young helper.

In 1905, the first of many paleontological field seasons was conducted at the Agate Springs Fossil Quarries by O. A. Peterson for the Carnegie Museum. The young Cook worked with Peterson every moment he could spare from ranch duties, and he read all the pertinent information he could get his hands on. Cook's father also gave permission to Amherst College, the University of Nebraska, and Yale University to collect fossils in closely adjoining deposits, spurring a rivalry between the institutions and adding to Harold's education.

Harold's self-education was so impressive that Professor Barbour invited him to instruct classes in beginning geology in advance of his registration at the University of Nebraska in 1908-09. When Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn brought in a party from the American Museum of Natural History in 1909, he also was impressed by Harold's ability and persuaded him to go to Columbia University to study under Osborn and Dr. W. K. Gregory. Harold worked as research assistant half-time for Dr. W. D. Matthew at the Museum and took 38 hours of class work at the graduate level on Professor Osborn's recommendation; therefore he could cover two year's study in one.

Early in 1910 Harold was forced to return to Agate to help with family and ranch affairs, thus ending his formal education, but not his connections with supporters such as E. H. Barbour, Walter Granger, F. B. Loomis, R. S. Lull, W. D. Matthew and W. J. Sinclair, all of whom contributed to his development. Correspondence with these men and other scientists contributed a major share of the papers in the Cook Library.

Later in 1910, Harold married Eleanor Barbour, daughter of E. H. Barbour, then Nebraska State Geologist. They lived near Agate on Harold's own claim until it was "proved up", (in a small house now called the Bone Cabin), then they moved to the ranch house. Harold and Eleanor had four daughters; Margaret, Dorothy, Winifred and Eleanor. In 1927, Harold and Eleanor were divorced after living apart for several years. Eleanor and the four daughters lived in Chadron, while Harold lived in Denver and at the ranch. Harold then married Margaret F. Crozier from Inglewood, California, but maintained extensive correspondence with his daughters, all of whom became college-educated.

Ranch life did not thwart Harold's scientific exploits. He continued exploring geological formations and paleontological sites on his own time, publishing the results extensively. Although his famous discovery of Hesperopithicus, the ape-man, was a misinterpretation by well-known scientists, his early man discoveries in Oklahoma and New Mexico expanded knowledge for the sciences of paleontology and archaeology alike. Cook was loosely associated with the Colorado Museum of Natural History in the early 1920's, and was appointed Curator of Paleontology in 1925, a position he resigned in 1929 due to differences of opinion with the director and to the pressures of ranch life. During the Depression years, he headed the Historical and Reconnaissance Survey for Scotts Bluff National Monument, and was appointed its' first custodian until mid-1935 when he was removed during political upheavals. Also during the 1920's Harold was appointed and served on the Nebraska State Park Board, and he was President of the Good Roads Association which campaigned for the establishment of Highway 29 the road through Agate.

While the earliest paleontologists visited and worked at the Agate Springs Bone Bed quarries, other surprising friends of James Cook gathered at his ranch house, 3 miles west of the fossil beds. These visitors made a 150-mile wagon trip from the Pine Ridge Reservation. It was the legendary Chief Red Cloud of the Oglala Lakota, and other members of the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes, who had years earlier led his warriors and allies in raids and epic battles against U.S. encroachment onto their lands.

Tents and tipis were erected alongside the Niobrara River, where the Lakota and Cheyenne guests told stories, danced, tanned hides and exchanged the gifts which now make up the James H. Cook Collection here at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.

For decades after, residents and visitors to the region came to the Agate Springs Ranch to see the amazing craftsmanship and historical importance of these gifts. Red Cloud's chief shirt and his own personal moccasins, the magnificent large peace pipe from the Fort Laramie treaty negotiations, and American Horse's war club from the Fetterman Fight.

All these are now on display here at Agate Fossil Beds as part of the Cook Collection.

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is nestled in the Niobrara River Valley in Nebraska 65 miles [110 km] east-southeast of its headwaters in the Hat Creek Breaks of Wyoming. The park preserves a unique unglaciated area of the High Plains. Wetlands stretch out from the river and meet terraces that lead to the breaks and buttes. The buttes contain important information about the life of mammals in the Miocene Epoch, some 20 million years ago. The park was created to preserve these rich fossil deposits and their geological contexts amidst today's natural ecosystem. Numerous mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds inhabit or pass through the park, undisturbed and protected. Many species of native grasses and shrubs grow across the park's landscape, as well as some undesirable non-native plants (e.g., Canada thistle) that the park does its best to control.

Curious what animals and plants you may see in the park? Check out the NPSpecies database below. Click on the "specific category" box to choose which type of animal or plant you want displayed. Then, click the blue "Get Checklist" button for a quick list of information. Want more? Click the blue "Get Full List" button to get information on taxonomy, scientific and common names, occurence in the park, and native status.

Did you know that five different plant communities exist within Agate Fossil Beds National Monument? Each community supports a different mix of plants, depending upon its proximity to the Niobrara River or to the water table. Discover everything from sedges and marshweed to prickly pear cactus as well as a wide variety of grasses. Moving from the Niobrara River to the high valley bluffs, you will find five plant communities: 1) riparian, 2) cottonwood, 3) lowland prairie, 4) upland prairie, and 5) rocky bluffs.

The wetland and riparian areas offer a look at water-loving plants not always seen in the prairie: fox tail barley, cattails, reeds, sedges, yellow Siberian irises and blue flag irises. The semiarid climate of the Great Plains area has led to the evolution of the grasslands. We protect a mixed grass prairie, a mixture of tall and short grasses growing together. The mixed grass prairie extends from North Dakota through South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, central Oklahoma and the north-central part of Texas. Prairies have semiarid climates with wide fluctuations in temperature. Most precipitation is received during the growing season. At Agate, this is from April to June. We average about 15 inches of precipitation a year. But during droughts, this can be as low as 9 inches... or less! Another characteristic of prairies is their flat to rolling terrain and fertile soil rich in organic matter. The climate and soils promote the growth of grasses, not trees which require more water. Vegetation plays a vital role in the ecosystem. Plants capture particulate dust in the air, filter gaseous pollutants, convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, provide animal habitat and food, and possess many raw materials useful to humans.

Rodents, rabbits and other small mammals are a vital source of food for predators, which include mammals as well as birds of prey such as hawks and bald eagles. Agate's common small rodents are the pocket gophers, kangaroo rats, pocket mice, ground squirrels, masked shrew and voles. Rodents are characterized by having two long, sharp incisors on their upper jaw and two on their lower with a significant space between incisors and grinding teeth located in the back of the jaw. At least 15 rodent species are known to be within the park, making up half of the mammal species. As there are few trees at Agate, most rodents live in the ground in burrows and feed upon insects, nuts, fruits, grasses, and occasionally meats. Some are active during the cooler hours of the day, while others prefer only to be out at night. The beaver spend their time hidden in the willows and shrubs of the riparian areas. In the winter, you may notice breathing holes in the ice on the river. This is a good indication that beaver are in the area.

Similar to the rodents are the rabbits, which also possess large incisors on the upper jaw but have smaller less obvious lower incisors. Their ears are long and they have a short cottony tail. Visitors will most likely see a desert cottontail browsing or resting near the Visitor Center and Museum. The cottontails can be distinguished from the jack rabbits by their small bodies, weighing 1 - 2¾ pounds, and fluffy white tail. Jackrabbits have long ears and larger, slimmer bodies, and are rarely sighted.

Another small mammal is the striped skunk, which is related to the weasel, mink, and badger but is considered a predator. Skunks are omnivorous, meaning they eat insects, plants and meats. They dine on insects, grubs, eggs and berries, and occasionally catch mice. Striped skunks are around the size of a house cat, black with white striped body and tail and spray a terrible odor if startled or scared. Though not related, the raccoon is similar in diet and behavior, but his body is larger, weighing 12 to 35 pounds, with a salt and pepper colored coat and a black and white ringed tail. Raccoons also have an omnivorous diet of fish, insects, berries and nuts. Both skunks and raccoons are nocturnal and solitary, spending their days in dens made of abandoned burrows, fallen trees, or rock clefts.

Hoofed grazers walk on two-part hooves formed by the third and fourth toes. The most commonly sighted of these animals are the white-tail and mule deer but pronghorns are occasionally seen, usually farther away from the Visitor Center and Museum. White-tails are easily identified by their fluffy white tails that wave while they bounce away. White-tails stand 3' - 3½' tall and weigh between 150 and 400 pounds. White-tails can run up to 40 mph and jump an impressive 30 ft. horizontally and 8½ ft. vertically. With a home range rarely over a mile wide, the white-tails at Agate spend most of their days browsing the forbs and shrubs of the wetland areas while spending hot mid-day hours resting hidden in the cattails and willows. Mule deer can be distinguished by large, mule-like ears, stockier bodies and they do not flag with their tail, meaning they do not hold it up as they run as white-tail deer usually do. Mule deer do not continually reside in the park they wander onto neighboring fields and migrate to higher elevations during the hot summer months. Males of both species have antlers that are shed in January or February and re-grown through summer to be ready for the rut (breeding season) in November and December. Quite different from the deer, pronghorns have evolved to live in the open environment. Their protruding eyes can see movement four miles away. They can sprint for 3 to 4 minutes at speeds up to 70 mph, settling into an easy cruise between 30 and 45 mph. Both sexes have horns, not antlers like deer that are shed yearly and re-grown. Pronghorns cover a large territory, about two to four square miles. These animals are easily distinguished by size, standing only three feet and weighing 75 to 130 pounds, having white markings on rump, belly and throat.

See and explore traditional Lakota tipis before your hike up the fossil hills! NPS Photo Get out and stretch your legs during your road trip through the plains! During the summer months, visit the tipis raised by members of the Lakota tribe.

We have two trails for you to hike and explore: The 1 mile Daemonelix Trail features in situ fossil exhibits of the spiral corkscrew fossil of the Paleocastor, an ancient land beaver that lived here in the Miocene. The 2.8 mile Fossil Hills Trail takes visitors to the historic dig sites. Explore the source of our famous fossil discoveries. On the way, a boardwalk takes you over natural wetlands and the Niobrara river. Please note that while there are many interpretive signs telling you about the paleontology history of the monument, there are currently no fossil displays on this trail. Paper trail guides are available in the visitor center or download the NPS App before you visit and with our free visitor center WiFi.

One of the fossil exhibit cases visitors will see when walking the Daemonelix trail. NPS Photo Daemonelix Trail This one-mile (1.6 km) trail at the west entrance is a tour through time. Two displays highlight the fascinating spiral burrows of the Paleocastor -- an ancient dry-land beaver. On the way up the trail to these "Devil's Corkscrews," you'll see ancient petrified sand dunes. Beyond them, look carefully at the bluffs around you for "Paleosols": fossilized roots, insect holes and small rodent burrows. These give scientists a rare glimpse of the ecological context that the fossilized animals lived in. And it lets us track how changes in Earth's climate impact mammals across time... including today.

University (left) and Carnegie Hills. The 2.7-mile Fossil Hills Trail allows visitors to walk up to and see the famed early 1900s quarries. From these quarries, paleontologists recovered some of the world's best preserved and most complete fossilized Menoceras, Moropus, and Dinohyus skeletons. NPS Photo Fossil Hills Trail This 2.8-mile (4.3-km) accessible concrete trail begins at the visitor center just past the tipis. It passes through native wetlands, over the Niobrara River -- a surprisingly small stream at this end of its course -- and up about 300 feet through restored mixed grass prairies.

At the top of the hills (about 250 feet elevation gain), you will find signage pointing out menoceras tracks, paleosols, Beardog den sites, and the historic excavation sites.

It was on these hills that future local rancher James Cook discovered fossilized bones in the mid 1880s. Excavations didn't commence until nearly twenty years later, following a 1904 visit by Olaf A. Peterson, a paleontologist from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Visit the historic Bone Cabin... but watch for rattlesnakes! NPS Photo The Bone Cabin About midway between the visitor center and Fossil Hills is an unpaved one-mile side trail that leads west to Harold J. Cook's homestead cabin. Restored to what it looked like in 1910, while Harold and his wife Eleanor still lived there, the "Bone" cabin was used after 1914 as the temporary residence for scientists who worked the fossil quarries. The American Museum of Natural History's lead excavator, Albert "Bill" Thomson, lived there whenever conducting field work in the bonebed in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

Get out and stretch your legs during your road trip through the plains! During the summer months, visit the tipis raised by members of the Lakota tribe. We have two trails for you to hike and explore: