In 1998 a citizens’ group on Isle La Motte, desiring to preserve the Chazy Fossil Reef from development and unregulated fossil collecting, formed the Isle La Motte Reef Preservation Trust. In partnership with the Preservation Trust of Vermont funds were raised to preserve the Fisk Quarry, a reef site well known to and studied by scientists, and the first reef site to be protected.
This beautiful old abandoned quarry, with wetlands, birds, and other wildlife, contains fossils called stromatoporoids - which were the builders of the middle section of the reef on Isle La Motte.
The 20 acre property is now called the Fisk Quarry Preserve and is a research and educational site,
open to the public. Interpretive signage in English and French tells the
geological, ecological, and human history of the old quarry.
Fisk Quarry Preserve
A gastropod frozen in time
Long extinct marine animals called stromotoporoids
are fossilized in the quarry walls.
Long extinct marine animals called stromotoporoids
are fossilized in the quarry walls.
Gastropods are common throughout the reef.
In the quarry walls one can see the fossil remains of stromatoporoids, an extinct ancestor of the sponge which was one of the builders the Chazy Reef.
