Broomcorn Express

BY FRED MARTIN

LINK: Be sure to watch the video of Fred Martin’s presentation on Wottge Farm on the Broomfield Historical Society’s YouTube channel.

The Broomfield Historical Society sponsored a special presentation on the 200-year history that led to the Wottge open space. Mayor Guyleen Castriotta said, 

“Broomfield, Colorado has been built by pioneers, historic visionaries, veterans, farmers, ranchers, and more recently, technologists. Among our important agrarian pioneers is the Wottge-Stonehocker family. Their story is an amazing journey from a 200-year family farm in Germany, the loss of that farm and family fortunes in World War II, forced migration through the ruins of post-war Germany, and their courageous resettlement in America; in Broomfield. They made a new start in a strange land as farm laborers until they could again build a family farm that has become the Broomfield-Wottge open space at 144th and Sheridan. Now Broomfield enjoys this recreational resource, wildlife preserve, and open landscape. With much pride, we thank the Wottge family—Ben Wottge, and sister Rose Stonehocker, who lived this heroic history.”

At the end of World War II, after the horrific crimes of Nazi Germany, there was a mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from homelands annexed to Poland, which has been chronicled in documentaries by National Geographic, Britannica, and others investigating this period of forced migration of enormous scale and tremendous human cost. Future Broomfield family, Alfons and Klara Wottge and five children, including Ben and Rose, lived this history. 

For over two hundred years, the Wottges lived a stable and reliable family life on their farm: about the same length of time Americans have enjoyed the freedoms and stability of democracy. Then, suddenly, it all changed. People with longstanding traditions and loyalty to their homeland were subsumed by radical political change they did not believe in or support. Despots and their followers sowed division and fear-of-the-other. Society was splintered. The Wottges then lived through the upheaval of World War II. The Normandy D-Day was about to occur, beginning the Allied sweep through Europe into Germany. Russian forces were pressing in from the east. After Nazi depredations in their invasion of Russia, Russian soldiers were brutal to German soldiers and civilians alike. The Wottges were surrounded by combat in the final months of the war as Russian troops pillaged the countryside. The family patriarch, Alfons Wottge, who later started the Broomfield farm, was drawn into the war. A neighbor in their small village of Rathmannsdorf reported to the authorities that Alfons was not flying the Nazi flag, nor was he participating in party activities. Alfons was subsequently drafted into the German Army in December, 1943, and sent to the brutal Russian front.

While Alfons was away, war closed in on the family. Ottmachau, a few miles to the northeast was bombed. Fires lit up the night sky. On February 13 came the Allied firebombing of Dresden, west of Rathmannsdorf, with 80,000 killed. The family was threatened by patrolling fighter planes. In these last months of the war, with the Luftwaffe suppressed, American fighter bombers were roaming the countryside seeking targets of opportunity. At times they dropped leaflets warning people where bombs would be dropped. Yet, unleashing their firepower was just as common. Trucks, trains, barns, and farmhouses might be hiding retreating Nazi troops and were considered fair game for the Allied pilots. 

Fearing the low-flying fighter planes, the family left the farm in March, 1945, on hay wagons to nearby towns. In the evenings they returned on bicycles to take care of the animals and gardens, but they had to leave again by morning, fearing the fighters. By the end of April, they returned home to the farm, but just as they started to get back into daily routines, the front again moved closer. Every day the “Stalin Organ” (what they called the Russian cannons and guns) came nearer. On May 9 they had to leave again, fearing the Russians. They headed into the hills and in the evening stopped, not knowing what to do. A farmer came and said “You can’t just stand there. If you are satisfied with the barn, come with me. The house is already full of other refugees.”                                                                               

The next day, the Russians came. The farmer offered them a very small room saying, “Come, you can no longer stay in the barn.” In this room lay 15 people on the floor, packed like herrings. During that night the Russians molested and harassed the women in the house. They beat hard on the door with their rifle butts but did not break down the door. The family prayed. Klara cried, saying, “If they get in, they will trample the children.” They felt the guardian angels watched over them that night. The next day, propaganda fliers and Hitler pictures were floating in the river. Silver crosses were given by the Nazi government to a mother after the birth of her 6th child. The mothers threw them in the river so the Russians would not find them. They spent two nights in that small room. The next afternoon they began the trek back to Rathmannsdorf. Now it seemed it was over and there would be a new beginning. But that was not to be. The next day, Russian and Polish hoodlums came and took everything they could use: food, clothing, sewing machines, farm machinery. The plundering lasted three weeks. 

In late April, the Reichstag in Berlin was overrun by Russian troops, Hitler commited suicide and Germany surrendered May 8. War in Europe ended, but the Wottge’s tribulations were just beginning. At war’s end, Germany was cut up into occupation zones. Stalin along with the allies, with little consultation with Poland and likely almost none with the defeated Germans, made a deal to partition a 200-mile section of east Germany to Poland. The Wottge farm was now in Poland. 

Then came a big group of Poles—every one picked a farm and took possession of the property. The Poles confined the Wottge family to two rooms in their own home. On August 18, 1945, Alfons Wottge arrived home and found a 17 person Polish family had taken over the house. It had taken Alfons many weeks to get home from the war. On May 4, he was taken prisoner by the Americans and not released until June 16. He was taken by truck to the Russian Army border, but he had walked the rest of the way home.        

September 2, 1945, happened to be the day the Japanese signed their unconditional surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, finally ending World War II. It was on a late summer Sunday. The Wottges, still living as guests in their own home, were at church. When they came out, notices had been posted that all Germans must be out of Rathmannsdorf that day by 4pm. The Poles had stolen their car, tractor, wagons, even carts. There was nothing left with wheels. They walked away only with what they could carry, without a destination in mind, part of a great migration of thousands of East German refugees. 

During this time, they survived by begging. They were also expected to help clean up the burned rubble and bombed building debris with shovels and wheel barrows. Alfons was forced into service as a mechanic because the Poles did not know how to use the diesel farm machinery they had stolen from them. 

After many months of this, Alfons learned of the last train scheduled to carry refugees to western Germany. In the general perception of World War II German history, loading people into cattle boxcars is a frightening icon of the Holocaust. Yet these were post-war refugees traveling west. Still, the travel conditions were no better. At the designated boarding area they were plundered and robbed again, then loaded into boxcars with 25 to 30 people and headed west. The train stopped often in open areas. In Marienborn they were deloused and given their first food to eat. Very hungry, some overstuffed themselves and many vomited, their bellies not used to food. They were on the train several days, arriving in West Germany June 2, 1946, and given shelter in a hunting lodge, sleeping on straw where many other refugees before them had lain. The next day wagons took the Wottges to a farm near Adenstedt. From 1946 to 1952, Alfons found work on the German railroad operating track gates while the family worked on a farm. Klara and the children worked in the fields. 

The cursory history most hear about post-war Germany is that the Allies liberated everyone and then they lived happily ever after. But life was very difficult in post-war Germany. Forty percent of homes had been destroyed. The ruined European economy could not absorb these huge, displaced populations, so humanitarian organizations looked to the United States as the site of new homes for the refugees.

It was in church that Alfons and Klara heard of the Catholic War Relief Services. US bishops played a role in this process of resettlement, working with the US government on a public relations campaign to persuade lay Catholics to open their communities to refugees. This is how Alfons and Klara Wottge were able to plan the family’s migration to America. They had captured the dream of finding a new life in America. They began a laborious application process with other families. The process was so difficult that the other families gave up, but Alfons said, “We’re not on a boat yet!”  So Alfons and Klara persevered. At last, Catholic relief services provided passage to the port of Bremerhaven and they boarded the USS General C.C. Ballou. The Ballou was built and outfitted as a troop ship. After the war she served around the world in refugee relocations and made a number of trips between Bremerhaven and New York. The voyage lasted ten days. 

They arrived in America June 10, 1952. Along with so many thousands of others, the Wottge family sailed past the lady, who is, as Emma Lazarus wrote, “A mighty woman with a torch whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name: Mother of Exiles.”  Perhaps, in our modern contentious politics we should be re-inspired by her words that are a foundational principle of America and that for the Wottge family was lived experience:                                                                    

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Before departure from Germany, they had to secure work in America, but it was not until processing in New York that they discovered they were headed to Colorado. There was no delay in New York; two days later they arrived by train in Denver, then by bus to Ft. Collins. They were met by rancher Floyd Combs who put them on his cattle truck and headed north past La Porte, past the first foothills near the Wyoming border, where there was a small house in the middle of nowhere. That was their first home in America. In those days, up the dirt roads into those dryland, hardscrabble foothills, it looked nothing like the green fields back home in Germany. The family were not yet proficient in English. There was serious consideration given to finding a way back to New York. The General Ballou was likely still in port there. Could they get train tickets?  Hitchhike?  It was unimaginable disappointment bordering on despair that Alfons and Klara turned into determination to survive and succeed as strangers in this strange new land. 

Alfons went to work as a farm laborer on this ranch that raised crops and had a dairy farm for a salary of $125 per month. Klara and the children also worked on the farm. Rose tells of having to dig fence post holes with tuna cans. They had no idea where they were, what schools might be available, or how to get to the nearest town, Ft. Collins, about 18 miles away. On a Sunday morning, Klara and Rose, 16 at the time, hitched a ride with a milk truck to Ft. Collins and found the Catholic church. They met some helpful people and were introduced to a farmer from south of Ft. Collins, Mr. Fatz, who spoke some German. He advised that they could not stay at the Combs place since there would be no way the children would get to school during the winter; they would be snowed in. So, he assisted the family in getting a new job on a farm about four miles south of Ft. Collins. Rose worked for a priest’s family for a dollar per day.                                                                            

Wealth and success are common in America, but what is most admirable, and more rare in history, are self-made people, especially those who have recovered from near-total loss. The Wottges lost that 200-year farm in Germany, then survived terrible years in post-war Germany, then migrated to Colorado as farm laborers, which isn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme. Just four years after arriving in this new country, Alfons and Klara mustered the down payment for a Broomfield farm. All five children pitched in. Rose recalls the negotiations. There was no help from the government, no grants, and they couldn’t afford feed. Banks turned them down and were telling them, “That’s dry land, there’s not enough water for livestock. And, you’re not citizens.”  Rose tells the charming story that her father Alfons had dropped a nickel in the collection plate at church and then entered the expenditure in his financial ledger. A third banker was impressed with that level of accounting detail and decided Alfons knew how to manage money. The farm was 80 acres costing 23,000 dollars. 

When they bought the farm, there was no Broomfield. There was a whistle-stop train depot called Zang’s Spur, with grain elevators and the Grange Hall that is still here. 144th was a dirt road, as was Lowell. Sheridan came much later in the future. The farm had a couple of horses and a milk cow. To make a living on the farm, they had to start a dairy. So, in 1956, with a loan from the Farmers Home Administration, they bought 28 milk cows. By doing water-witching they located a stream about 80 feet deep and found sufficient water to run a dairy farm. They became quite successful, ending up with about 60 head of cattle, 40 milk cows, and 20 yearlings of cattle on average. It was not easy, but with the whole family working together, they overcame the obstacles.                                               

The family has made two pilgrimages back to the old homeplace in Rathmannsdorf. What an evocative experience this must have been for them! They met and dined with the descendants of the Polish family that took their house and evicted them. An elderly woman was a young girl in World War II and remembered them. She cried with feelings of remorse when she met the Wottges.                      

Alfons and Klara achieved their dream of regaining self-sufficiency with the Broomfield Farm, raising the children in the three-bedroom farm house. They retired comfortably to a home they built in Thornton. Rose married Walt Stonehocker, known in Adams County farming history, and had seven children. She worked for CF&I, and with Walt, farmed in the Northglenn area until the city bought their farm, after which they purchased a farm in the Brighton area where Rose still lives. They also purchased a ranch near Granby where their kids and 17 grandchildren love to work and play.

Ben has four kids. He worked for Power Equipment Company for 44 years as a construction machinery mechanic and supervisor until retirement. Now he and Pam live on four acres of the original farm in Broomfield. Brother Konrad lived and worked on the farm, working part time for the railroad. He graduated from CU Boulder, has worked in oil and gas engineering throughout the world, and is currently living in Ecuador. He has five children. Ursula and her sister Renate left together for California. They stopped in Las Vegas, where Ursula remained for 50 years. She raised two sons, worked in the hotel industry, and then became a stock investment wizard and a happy dog caretaker. Renate became a US citizen in 1960. She married Gary Burkett, an Air Force veteran, and worked for Xerox Corporation. They had two daughters and four grandchildren and live in southern California.

For twenty years, Ben and Pam fostered children with Boulder County. From 1992 to 2012 they had 147 placements from newborns to preteens. That’s a lot of children to care for in your home. The farm was a wonderful place for these kids to be cared for. Josiah, their first foster child, they adopted.

So, consider how many lives this immigrant family, who were driven from their home in Germany, then came to America for a new life, have impacted and bettered in our city, county and nation. The Wottge name is now on this new land because of all these journeys of Klara and Alfons, Ben and Rose, and family. It’s now a permanent part of Broomfield’s heritage with this open space under development for everyone. 

Fred Martin provides WWII aviation presentations to museums and civic groups at no cost. Visit his website: FredTMartin.com

Read also “A Short History Of the Open Space of Broomfield,” by Annie Lessem in the Broomcorn Express.

So you walk the path that once was trod
By wise and ancient kings
Searching in the mists of time
For gifts of unknown things

 — From Gifts of Unknown Things by Jim Capaldi

INTRODUCTION

It’s not that I think we have completely covered all aspects of Broomfield’s relatively recent history, but I thought it might be interesting for a change to set the wayback machine to an even earlier time and try to tell a part of the pre-human history story of our area. You may have seen the news reports in the past year of a group of high school students looking for and finding dinosaur remains on the north side of Broomfield.¹ What you may not be aware of is that Colorado has more fossil sites than any other state. It is important to understand why we need to dig into the history of the area by learning about its evolution through geological time that created the environments necessary for fossil preservation.² The who, what, when, where and why of the fossil record may not be generally known but they form an important piece of Broomfield history.

The colors on the map represent the different ages of rocks- tans and pinkish colors are very recent Pleistocene layers of loess and alluvium that represent erosion of previous rock layers during ice age glaciation resulting in fine grain unconsolidated soils with numerous cobbles. Interspersed with those areas we see pockets of green: these are much older Cretaceous rocks (going from older to younger) of the Laramie, Arapahoe, and the Denver Formations. These rock outcrops are important here because most of the dinosaur tracks and fossils found in Broomfield and surrounding counties come specifically from these rock layers.⁴ The Cretaceous rocks of interest here were deposited between 69 and 65.5 million years before the present.

Rocks in the Laramie Formation are primarily made up of sandstone, mudstone, and clay⁵; the Arapahoe Formation consists of conglomerate, sandstone, and claystone; and the Denver Formation is made up of shale, claystone, and sandstone.⁶  The point here is that while these rock layers were deposited in adjoining time slices, their composition is very different, which implies that they were deposited in different environments—which may be significant in terms of the types of fossils that they may contain.

THE CRETACEOUS ENVIRONMENT: LAND, PLANTS, AND ANIMALS

As you may be aware, there is evidence that over geological time, continents can move creating new oceans and potentially colliding to form new continents and drive-up mountain ranges. At the start of the Cretaceous, much of today’s Colorado was under water: an ocean called the Western Interior Seaway ran from the North Pole to the Gulf of Mexico. Over time the water level in the seaway receded and “the sludgy sediment left behind was ideal for capturing the animals and plants that flourished in the subtropical climate.”⁷ Consider the implications: if you lived in what will become the Anthem or Baseline communities during the Cretaceous, you might be under water from an inland ocean. If you head west to Skyestone, you are not just on land but heading towards rugged mountains. In between near Arista there is a pre-historic natural equivalent of I-25: a sandy beach running for hundreds of miles going north and south that creates a natural migration path for the animals of the time. Sometimes the beach is interrupted by rivers flowing out of the mountains that are surrounded by low-lying swampy areas, all basking in a climate more like today’s Houston than Broomfield.

Why tell you about paleo environments when the idea was to talk about dinosaurs? A paper by Carpenter and Young makes the case that the assemblages of dinosaurs varied by the environments that they lived in.⁸ They characterize the Laramie Formation as being associated more with swampy and near-river locations that had a varied faunal assemblage including Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. Laramie flora includes myrtles, figs, and an extinct genus of palms.⁹ The Arapahoe Formation is characterized as a conglomerate, with its composite materials derived from nearby mountains, making it of more terrestrial origin; it has yielded comparatively few fossils, mostly from ceratopsids. Plants associated with the Arapahoe are essentially the same fauna as in the Denver Formation and include maples, birches, oaks among others.¹⁰ The Denver Formation differs from the other two yet again and may be an intermediate environment that has a varied dinosaur assemblage including Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and hadrosaurids. It’s probably an appropriate time to mention that the rocks from the Cretaceous would lead you to believe that Broomfield was a dinosaur wonderland, but by the end of the Cretaceous, dinosaurs had become extinct. Moreover, although many of their fossils have been found, most represent scattered fragments as opposed to recognizable skeletons, which “suggests a considerable passage of time between death and burial of the specimens.”¹¹

THE FOSSIL RECORD

Having thought about the rocks beneath our feet, their age, the environments that they were deposited in, and the animals and plants that they are associated with, we need to understand the support for the idea that dinosaurs once lived here. Specifically, what could possibly remain of animals and plants that died millions of years ago?  Fossils are anything that is preserved when time, heat, and pressure turn a layer of the earth from soft sediments into hardened rock layers. Along the way, bones and components of the skeleton of an animal can be replaced by minerals, thereby preserving their original shape. As it turns out, there are different mechanisms that may preserve other evidence of earlier life: footprints, trackways, exoskeletons, shells, the outline and internal structure of plants, and petrified wood are all examples of fossils.

If you need a deeper dive into the fossils of our area, consider a day trip to Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison. Dinosaur Ridge is considered the best site to accessibly see long tracks of multiple types of dinosaurs, while their small exhibit hall has a series of maps and dinosaur assemblage pictures that will let you get up close and personal with the world as it may have looked in the Late Cretaceous.¹² You can also take in Triceratops Trail in Golden which is the #3 track site in the US,¹³ where you can not only see Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, and duck-billed dinosaur footprints, but also rain drops, palm frond impressions, and insect tracks captured in stone which gives some sense of the diversity of fossil evidence that remains.

Something you can do right now is take a trip to the Broomfield Library. In the entry atrium, just past the side door to the auditorium, is a slab of rock that was identified in 1999 in landscaping in the Interlocken Business Park close to the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport. Based on the descriptive information in front of the rock slab, 23 tracks are visible, and they are attributed to both bird-footed ornithomid and mammal-footed theropod dinosaurs.¹⁴ The material near the tracks says the rock is from the Laramie Formation: given the identification of clear three-toed footprints from a bipedal ornithomimid dinosaur, it seems like the slab is more likely to be from the Denver Formation. (The type species of Ornithomimus velox was first discovered in 1890 in Colorado. It is believed to have been covered in feathers and had a toothless beak.¹⁵) This is probably a good place to point out that fossil identification can be challenging for several reasons, including incomplete primary preservation, incorrect geological formation attribution, broken or fragmented remains, erosional effects, and transportation of fossils to a different location. The Wright and Lockey (2001) article that was used to extract the information on display at the library about the trackways says that when they examined the slab it had already been moved and the outcrop from which it came was unknown and no longer exposed, which clearly adds some uncertainty about age determination. Within the next year, there is a plan to move the library rock slab to CU Boulder, where I’m sure the paleontologists will work to establish the correct age and fossil identification; in the meanwhile, visit and do your own investigation.

PEOPLE AND FOSSILS

The first indigenous people on the continent are thought to have arrived about 12,000 years ago, which means that a mere 64+ million years separated them from our late Cretaceous dinosaurs. The layers of rock with fossils will have been buried, uplifted, and eroded in the intervening time, which means that just like today, it is entirely possible that the earliest residents of Colorado could have found fossils, and we can surmise that they would have easily recognized bones that were unlike those from animals they hunted. In one article, I found the following insights: “rock art and oral traditions centering on winged monsters and giant, primal beasts suggest that Native Americans across the West found remains and explained them, often via creation stories, over thousands of years. Navajo elders in the 1930s, Mayor writes, spoke of “places in the desert where one could see monstrous heads ‘sticking out from roots of trees and stones, from springs and swamps.’ ”¹⁶ The start of scientific paleontology in Colorado dates back to the 1860s, and by the 1870s, excavations had started at locations like Dinosaur Ridge. Modern construction continues to unearth fossils around the Front Range, such as the Interlocken slab.

FOSSIL-RELATED LAW

If you feel energized to go out and do your own fossil-related exploration and collection, it’s probably worthwhile to mention that there are laws you should be aware of. If you are on Federal land, you can’t collect fossils from vertebrates due to restrictions from the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act. You can collect invertebrate fossils for yourself but can’t sell them. The rules for collecting fossils in National Forrest System lands are governed by the same laws.

Collecting fossils on Colorado state-owned lands also has restrictions and permitting requirements, as well as associated special requirements on extraction of the fossils.¹⁷ Vertebrate fossils are considered public property and are sent to museums and universities.

If you are on private land, obviously you should first have the landowner’s permission to be there. If it is your property or you have permission to be on someone else’s property, you can collect and keep or sell any fossils you find.¹⁸ 

Perhaps the best general guidance is this: if you do happen to find a significant fossil anywhere, leave it undisturbed, take pictures, note the location, and forward the information on to one of our local museums to assess its relevance.

The county government of Broomfield itself would not normally be a repository for fossils. However, through an unusual chain of custody, it received a collection of fossils and casts collected in Broomfield in 1997, which currently resides in our archives. The CCoB received the necessary permit to retain those materials locally, which appear in the photo on the previous page.¹⁹

AFTERWORD

I wrote this article after seeing the news reports of fossils being found by high school students in Broomfield and wondering how they might be retained and displayed for the greater Broomfield population. In addition, I spent some time looking at the slab in the Broomfield library and wondered about how you could put something in plain sight and still have people walk by without noticing something so significant. 

If you feel motivated to find out more, here are two books you can use as references. The first is Walking With Dinosaurs by Anthony Fredericks, which tells you about fossil sites throughout Colorado, with instructions on how to get there and what to look for.²⁰ The other is Geology Underfoot Along Colorado’s Front Range by Lon Abbott and Terri Cook, which will fill in the details on local geology and has information on the best sites to visit.²¹

Finally, a few local (but out of county) field trips can give you a sense of what looking for fossil evidence in the field involves: Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison and Triceratops Trail in Golden are both mostly accessible sites to view in situ dinosaur tracks and are an easy day trip from Broomfield. 

1. Hernandez, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Hernandez. “Dinosaur Footprints, Fossils Discovered “in Our Own Backyard” in Broomfield.” The Denver Post, June 2, 2024. https://www.denverpost.com/2024/06/01/dinosaur-fossil-footprints-broomfield/.

2. Fredericks, Anthony D. Walking With Dinosaurs: Rediscovering Colorado’s Prehistoric Beasts. Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 2012.

3. Trimble, Donald E., and Michael N. Machette. “Geologic Map of the Greater Denver Area, Front Range Urban Corridor, Colorado.” Accessed February 7, 2025. https://doi.org/10.3133/i856h.

4. Carpenter, Kenneth, and D. Bruce Young. “Late Cretaceous Dinosaurs From the Denver Basin, Colorado.” Rocky Mountain Geology v. 37, no. 2 (November 2002): 237–54. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kenneth-Carpenter-2/publication/40662150_Late_Cretaceous_dinosaurs_from_the_Denver_Basin_Colorado/links/58c6e470a6fdccde55e3ae92/Late-Cretaceous-dinosaurs-from-the-Denver-Basin-Colorado.pdf.

5. Wikipedia contributors. “Laramie Formation.” Wikipedia, December 1, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laramie_Formation

6. Wikipedia contributors. “Arapahoe Formation.” Wikipedia, January 3, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arapahoe_Formation.

7. LaRusso, Jessica. “A Dinosaur Lover’s Guide to Colorado.” 5280, July 1, 2023. https://www.5280.com/a-dinosaur-lovers-guide-to-colorado/.

8. Johnson, J Harlan. “The Paleontology of the Denver Quadrangle, Colorado.” Accessed February 8, 2025. https://coloscisoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/CSS_Proc_v12_pp369-378_Paleontology_Denver_Quad-JHJohnson-pt2.pdf.

9. Wikipedia contributors. “Laramie Formation.” Wikipedia, December 1, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laramie_Formation.

10. Johnson, J Harlan. “The Paleontology of the Denver Quadrangle, Colorado.” Accessed February 8, 2025. https://coloscisoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/CSS_Proc_v12_pp369-378_Paleontology_Denver_Quad-JHJohnson-pt2.pdf.

11. Johnson, J Harlan. “The Paleontology of the Denver Quadrangle, Colorado.” Accessed February 8, 2025. https://coloscisoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/CSS_Proc_v12_pp369-378_Paleontology_Denver_Quad-JHJohnson-pt2.pdf.

12. Ruiz, Elizabeth. “Denver 7 Colorado News (KMGH).” Denver 7 Colorado News (KMGH), August 30, 2019. https://www.denver7.com/news/political/national/dinosaur-ridge-in-colorado-ranked-no-1-track-site-in-all-of-u-s.

13. Lahale, and Lahale. “Triceratops Trail: An Easy Colorado Hike in the Tracks of Dinosaurs | Family Well Traveled.” Family Well Traveled | Family Travel Blog Offering Encouragement and Tips for Easy and Affordable Travel With Kids, October 25, 2024. https://familywelltraveled.com/2019/08/31/triceratops-trail-an-easy-colorado-hike-in-the-tracks-of-dinosaurs/.

14. Wright, Joanna, and Martin Lockley. “Dinosaur and Turtle Tracks From the Laramie/Arapahoe Formations (Upper Cretaceous), Near Denver, Colorado, USA.” Cretaceous Research 22, no. 3 (June 1, 2001): 365–76. https://doi.org/10.1006/cres.2001.0262.

15.Wikipedia contributors. “Ornithomimus.” Wikipedia, October 26, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithomimus.

16. LaRusso, Jessica. “A Dinosaur Lover’s Guide to Colorado.” 5280, July 1, 2023. https://www.5280.com/a-dinosaur-lovers-guide-to-colorado/.

17. “Archaeology & Paleontology Permits | History Colorado,” n.d. https://www.historycolorado.org/archaeology-paleontology-permits.

18. Ancient Odysseys. “Can I Keep Fossils I Find? Understanding the Laws Around Fossil Collection,” May 21, 2024. https://www.ancientodysseys.com/post/can-i-keep-fossils-i-find-understanding-the-laws-around-fossil-collection.

19. CatalogIt. “CatalogIt HUB,” n.d. https://hub.catalogit.app/9352/folder/entry/39306730-47f0-11ed-bbc8-4585eef376c9.

20. Fredericks, Anthony D. Walking With Dinosaurs: Rediscovering Colorado’s Prehistoric Beasts. Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 2012.

21. Abbott, Lon, and Terri Cook. Geology Underfoot Along Colorado’s Front Range. Geology Underfoot, 2012.