Jensen, Utah, Nov. 10, 1909



My dear Dr. Holland,

I know you will be anxious to learn all you can about the Dinosaurs here, on your return to America, so I will try to have a letter there on your arrival.

Though it takes constant effort to get some things that are needed here the work has been progressing rather more rapidly than I expected. There has been an almost unaccountable scarcity of men here yet I was fortunate in getting all the men I needed and just the men I want -- men who are resourceful and ever ready to do their part.

Plaster is very expensive here when we have had to send away for it. It costs 6c/ or 7c/ per lb. A man here however undertook to make some for us. He made nearly a half a ton and it works splendidly. Am sorry that I did not get him to make about two tons. Shall get him to make a lot more if he has not gone away and will make it. He charges me 3 1/2c. You will conclude, before I am through that it will take lots of material as well as much labor.

I have used up all the alcohol in Vernal. Have ordered 25 gal from Grand Junction which ought to have been here long ago. Am making every effort to hurry it up. I had to send two men and teams over 50 miles for lumber. They got nearly 2000 feet but begin to see that we probably will not have nearly enough as the Dinosaur skeletons are increasing in numbers. I could not get a hundred feet of lumber in Vernal.

The bones of the best skeletons are in a gray sandstone and, a little distance from the surface are splendidly preserved. In some places the sandstone is very hard but back of the rock that contains the bones --between that and the hard sandstone beds -- there is usually, so far, a softer stratum that enables us to get back of (geologically below) the bones.

The beds dip at an angle of nearly 60o to the south so excavating to uncover the bones is more nearly vertical than horizontal. [Sketch] This dip to the south with the high sandstone ledge on the north makes almost the best possible conditions for excavating at this time of the year. We haven't suffered with the cold a day, and even now its pretty hot in the middle of the day when the sun shines. The skeletons lie in such a position too that they could easily be enclosed and one could work in the roughest weather. We went within less than a half mile of the place when you and I went from the dredge to Murray's ranch. You remember the fine exposures of rock on our right Green River being on our left.

Now as to the skeletons themselves. Sometimes conditions are such that only one or two can work at the principal diggings and I send the extra men to two other places in the same beds. Only a few rods away is the skeleton of a comparatively small Dinosaur, apparently with short laterally compressed teeth with finely serrate edges. Some of the teeth seem to be long curved and conical. The bones of this skeleton are not scattered, but those of the neck are considerably broken and flattened.

About 20 rods from here I found a foot. Apparently with nearly all the metatarsals and phalanges including three ungual phalanges. One bone which I thought was a metacarpal is about 30 in long and 15 inches across the upper end but flattened and concave - convex. But in uncovering the foot we came to the femur, and, apparently, the tibia and fibula lying parallel so we have them all in one block. But the femur is only four feet long so the supposed metacarpal would hardly be that bone of that animal. In uncovering the hind limb we struck a pelvis, two vertebrae &c. so the omnicient [sic] only knows how much there is of that animal.

But I've just got to the good part of the story and your tired, and so am I for I've been working to day. But the nature of the remainder of the story is such as to have a tendency to cost a fellow who is interested in Dinosaurs.

Well we went down on the big Brontosaurus until we came to four sternal ribs and true ribs pointing in a direction which indicated that the back bone was bent like a bow, so that the spines of the anterior portion of the back might point nearly vertically downward. We found that we must not go down any farther until we got the upper portions out. We then began to work in back to the left of the pelvis to get below the thing and discovered a series of vertebrae running to the left (west) and upward. They looked like cervicals and we concluded that the beast had thrown his neck and head back over his back so instead of going down anywhere from ten to thirty feet for the neck and digging for months in a state of suspense for the skull, here it was right before us and if the skull had been buried there and hadn't come to the surface and been weathered out we would soon have it. Well we followed it with beating hearts -- the neck I mean, and it turned downward a little. I could almost see the skull I was so sure of it for was there not a series of 8 cervicals undisturbed and in natural position, but when I had come to what I thought was the third or fourth cervical I dug ahead and there were no more. Apparently it had gone the way of all Brontosaur skulls. How disappointing and sickening. We thought as one of my men said, "If there isn't a skull there there aint a dam bit of use of looking for one anywhere".

Afterward I dug down and discovered that there was another series of vertebrae turned bottom side up and going right nearly parallel with the first series. We uncovered a series of 7 of the cervical ribs with their posterior processes pointing westward showing that the neck was going toward the head to the right and toward the pelvis that had been uncovered.

In the mean time we had found a little Dinosaur to the left of the pelvis. When we had secured the tail, pelvis, femur, tibia, sacrum &c of this (in one block we saw the rib of another cervical making 8 in all and the lower portions all large. So we must have been mistaken about the parallel series. It is yet a puzzle, but I do not intend to let my curiosity lead to endangering the the safety of the specimen. At any rate there is a series of 8 cervicals going right toward and running under the pelvis of Dinosaur no. 1 and it cant be far to the skull if it is in place with reference to the neck, but it may be a long time before we see it as the pelvis, vertebrae &c have to be removed.

I am not certain yet, but everything indicates that this neck belongs to another individual than No. 1 (the first discovered. It is difficult if not impossible to see how a Dinosaur could have gotten his neck detached from his body &c &c. Then too it lies at a little lower level. It looks as if one lay top of the other. The back line of the little Dinosaur is running on perfectly connected as far as we have gone at least 8 or 10 vert. anterior to the sacrum.

But I'm tired of Dinosaurs and I fain would sleep. So good night.

Nov. 11.