By Julie Martineau
For The Beacon
This object is not originally from Des Moines County but was collected by a well-known Burlingtonian. And, it should be noted, that it’s kin can be found here in Des Moines County, if very rarely. And, it should be noted, the specimens found here are hundreds of millions of years older than our object.
There is a badly damaged paper tag on the other side of the object that has writing, some of which reads “El Paso County”, with the rest being illegible.
Charles and Edith Perkins and family are responsible for
Perkins Park in Burlington, (among others) but did you know that they are also
responsible for The Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado? In the
1870’s, the railroads had made their way west. And Charles Perkins (as the head
of the CB&Q) was able to not only access the area around Colorado Springs,
he could also afford to purchase land there.
In 1879, he purchased two hundred
and forty acres, with the intention of establishing a summer home on the
property. He would later add acres to the property, but never actually built on
the property himself. It seems that he preferred to leave the property as it
was, for the enjoyment of the public, who had access to the property (his
family would donate the land after his death in 1907 to the city of Colorado
Springs, with the intention of setting up a public park, so that the land would
always be accessible).
And it was during one of his many visits west that Mr. Perkins, or one of his family members, collected this ammonite shell. The object is possibly a Axonoceras Compressum, a species of ammonite (a relative of the octopus, squid, cuttlefish and nautilus) that inhabited the Western Interior Seaway. At the end of the Cretaceous period, an intense period of mountain building caused the seaway to dry up, leaving behind the fossilized remains of the animals that once inhabited the ocean.
While we don’t know for sure, we think that the specimen, and others from the same area, were purchased at a local rock and fossil shop. They were later brought to Burlington and absorbed into the larger Perkins Collection. And, sometime between 1909 and 1927, the Perkins Collection was given to the Burlington Community School District. Later, in 2007, the Collection was once again moved, this time it was absorbed into the Collection at the Heritage Museum in Burlington.
Want to see more of the Perkins Collection? Several objects are on display at the Heritage Museum in Burlington!