It Happened Here -- The "Naples Tree"

Grimes Glen a County Park  off of NY 21, Naples, N,Y.

It has always seemed a little odd that New York State Historical Markers sometimes have as their subjects geological features or paleontological discoveries, but of course, any discovery has a story (a history) behind it, and as it turns out there are some interesting stories behind several of the early discoveries associated with the New York State Museum.

Millions of years before land animals (much less man) walked the face of the earth a great shallow inland sea covered much of what became New York State. Great storms slammed into the eastern shores of this Devonian Sea, flooding the streams that made up the Catskill delta and undercutting the tiny fibrous roots of a tree of a species of large fern-trees.  Over the years probably countless trees were undercut and floated out far into this sea.  This tree drifted perhaps 150 miles west before it became waterlogged and sank to the mud at the bottom of the sea.  Eventually sediments covered and encased the tree and fossilization began, preserving the features of the tree to a remarkable extent.  Over the eons, uplift continued and the sea bottom became a plateau. During the ice ages the glaciers carved great furrows into this plateau which became New York's Finger Lakes, and small streams of runoff water drained into these lakes. One of these streams at the head of Lake Canandaigua flowed nearly over the fossilized tree and eventually eroded a gully that left exposed part of a limb of the long buried tree.

In the 1870's and 1880's two men were regular companions in the search for fossils around the Naples area and throughout western New York. The younger man, John M. Clarke was a college trained student of Geology who had earned his degree from Amherst five years before, and just recently secured a professorship in Geology and Mineralogy at Smith College.  The older man, his uncle, had been, like the tree battered by life's storms and cast adrift.  D. Dana Luther was a miller, by trade, like his father before him, but he developed "miller's asthma," an allergy to the flour he ground at his mill and he could no longer pursue his trade.  Then his wife of many years, Augusta (Wiley) Luther, suddenly died.  Luther bought a small men's clothing shop in the nearby village of Naples, New York, but his heart wasn't really in the business and he frequently closed his shop early to seek solace in the woods and pursue his passion for hunting fossils, often with his nephew. Over a period of thirteen years they spent much of their summers together collecting fossils.

In 1882 while exploring Grimes Creek, Luther spotted a small line of coal-like material on the edge of a rock ledge, along the creek.  Chipping into the ledge he discovered it was part of a branch-like structure that led to a flattened scaly trunk.  His excitement grew as his excavation revealed a fossilized trunk that went on and on, running out of the gully, up into the farmland above it, right under a pigsty and beyond, before terminating with the tops of broken roots. Luther had discovered a nearly whole tree, over 18 feet in length!  More importantly, it was unlike anything that had been discovered before.  Eventually, scientists would attach a scientific name,  Lepidosigillaria to it, but it would be known popularly as the "Naples Tree".  Luther, excited, contacted his nephew.  The State Museum was wired and James Hall, its Director, visited the site. Painstakingly, over the next months, Luther freed the fossil from its matrix and mounted it for shipment.  In 1887 it was placed in the State Museum.

John Clarke was named assistant State Paleontologist in 1886.  In 1891 he hired Dana Luther to the museum staff as a field assistant.  At age 51 the miller, turned haberdasher, with a passion for paleontology would begin what became a twenty five year career in paleontology/geology.  He would go on to map much of the geology of western and central New York State.  He would co-author dozens of monographs and papers, retiring in 1916 at age 76!


Next Week-- The Lily and the Marker of the Week Returns!

E-Mail Me: If you have comments about this blog or any other thing having to do with NYSHM's I would be delighted to hear from you. I would be especially interested if you know of any new or interesting markers or can report on any efforts to restore old markers. My email is tba998@gmail.com I look forward to hearing and sharing your thoughts on this blog.