AA-2026-2523E9
On the image
Someone in 1953 stood very close to a roadcut or eroded embankment and pointed a camera at the raw face of it, which is either the most boring photograph ever taken or an extremely useful one, depending entirely on whether you are a geologist. The exposed sedimentary wall is studded with what appear to be shell fragments and fossil inclusions — the kind of conglomerate face that in the postwar decades had geologists and amateur naturalists alike scrambling down highway embankments with hammers, because the great road-building programs of the era were cutting through more undisturbed strata than any previous generation had ever seen at once. A blue-painted stake or rod intruding from the upper left suggests this was a documented survey site rather than a casual stop, someone having already marked the location before the shutter was pressed. The 1950s were the golden age of confident field documentation — men with clipboards and datum stakes who assumed that a close-up of a rock face, properly archived, would one day answer a question someone hadn't thought to ask yet. They were right about that, which is the rare outcome.
Visually related — by likeness
Fossil-Bearing Sedimentary Rock Face Exposure, 1953. 1953. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-2523E9. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/fossil-bearing-sedimentary-rock-face-exposure-1953.
@misc{aaAA20262523E9,
title = {Fossil-Bearing Sedimentary Rock Face Exposure, 1953},
year = {1953},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-2523E9},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/fossil-bearing-sedimentary-rock-face-exposure-1953}
}TY - ART TI - Fossil-Bearing Sedimentary Rock Face Exposure, 1953 PY - 1953 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-2523E9 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/fossil-bearing-sedimentary-rock-face-exposure-1953 ER -
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