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Project Overview
Natural Features
Fossils
Wildlife
Vision for the Park
Goodsell Ridge Guide
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Overview
The Lake Champlain Land Trust and the Isle La Motte Preservation Trust have acquire the 81-acre Goodsell Ridge property that is home to a unique collection of 480 million year old fossils that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
Vision
Our vision is to open Goodsell Ridge to the public as an outdoor museum, a place to hike and search for the footprints of an ancient life system our land once knew. We are creating a partnership between the public, private, educational, and scientific communities to create this unique outdoor museum and fossil preserve. This land will provide an unparalleled educational opportunity and outdoor classroom for students of all ages. We also have the opportunity to create a network of fossil preserves within Isle La Motte. |
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Goodsell Ridge Fossil Preserve
A Once in a 480-Million-Year Opportunity!
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Rock Party - 9/16/2006
After five years of hard work, we celebrated the grand opening of the Goodsell Ridge Fossil Preserve in Isle La Motte on September 16th, 2006. Over 150 of our friends joined us for geologist guided fossil tours, music, food, and celebration. The crowd cheered the ribbon cutting that finally opened the preserve to the public.
The Goodsell Ridge Fossil Preserve, in Isle La Motte, is one of Vermont’s treasures and is now open to scientists, school groups, and visitors of all ages. The preserve is world renowned for its 480 million year old Ordovician era fossils. The project was completed in partnership with the Isle La Motte Preservation Trust, VHCB, and hundreds of supporters. Thank you!
- Noted landscape architect David Raphael (ww.landworksvt.com ) has volunteered to help design the parks trails, kiosks, and infrastructure. Below are some initial drafts. |
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Become a Part of This Unique Place
- We are still raising funds to complete the infrastructure of the farmhouse. All gifts of $100 and above will receive a beautiful Goodsell Ridge T-shirt!
- We can't wait to open this important area to geologists, students, and visitors from all over the world. This is an exciting opportunity and we hope you will join our e-mail notification list. We will keep you up to date every step of the way as we open up this park to the public. Send us an e-mail today to join the list. |
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Gastropod |
Stromatoporoid |
Cephalopod |
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| Turn time back 480 million years and stand on Isle La Motte, the northern most island of Lake Champlain and you would find yourself swimming in the shallow tropical Iapetus Ocean with no land in sight. You would be below the equator, about Zimbabwe’s latitude, and there would be a great reef stretching out before you. It is on this reef that an incredible diversity of organisms formed and flourished. It is on this reef that corals first appeared and the world’s earliest appearance of a complex reef building natural community.
Goodsell Ridge contains the most complete fossil record of the world’s oldest reef dating back over 480 million years ago. On Goodsell Ridge, between stands of cedars and clusters of purple clematis and snowy aster, the ancient bedrock juts out from the soil, displaying in swirls and fossils organisms of extraordinary antiquity. 
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| - Beaver, raccoon and fox tracks can be found along the Ridge. All of the Island’s provide abundant habitat for waterfowl, and Goodsell Ridge is no exception. It also provides lush breeding habitat for a number of songbirds and wild turkey. One can observe the Northern Harrier, often soaring over Goodsell Ridge, eyeing the open fields for prey.
Long ago, the Ridge was alive with the first inhabitants of the reef like structures. The spiny trilobite, ancestor to the modern horseshoe crab, made its way in and around the reef community. The cephalopod, an earlier form of the squid with a shell in the shape of a windsock, was another such primitive animal. Great cabbage-shaped creatures, stromatoporoids, grew from the ocean floor. Goodsell Ridge contains some of the earliest coral species. Early forms of sponges clung to the reef. All of these primitive species can be seen along Goodsell Ridge; even the tides and currents have been imprinted in the beds. |
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Saving Our Lakeshore and Natural Areas
Lake Champlain Land Trust One Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401 802.862.4150 or info@LCLT.org |
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