Right here in 1936, a teenage Allen Bennison found some fossils while out on his bike looking for rocks and butterflies in the hills just above this landslide in Del Puerto Canyon (more info: 1). He brought them to his high school science teacher who notified researchers from the UC Berkeley Department of Paleontology. Some of those fossils were identified as the remains of a hadrosaur, the first dinosaur fossils to be found and identified in the state. Allan Bennison received a lot of local notoriety for this, and he eventually went on to have a prolific career as a professional geologist. Geology classes from schools like Modesto Junior College still regularly use the roadside stops along Del Puerto Canyon Road to view the area for field trips.

However, Del Puerto Water District and San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority have introduced plans for an agribusiness reservoir that would inundate the area and require the public roadway to be redirected (more info: 1, 2, 3). When teachers and other local groups spoke out about the loss of existing recreational and educational activities, water district officials engaged in a series of public communications equating stopping along public right-of-ways with trespassing and questioning the credibility of local educators about the exact location and historic nature of Allan Bennison's discovery site.  They also claimed they would be willing to "compromise" by creating replacement roadside nature stops along an alternate roadway for activities they approve of and that would not get in their way. This planned reservoir is designed to primarily store commercial water for agribusiness use, with other potential benefits to non-ag water users being secondary and incidental in nature. Contrary to their claims, this is not a compromise as this and other sites, along with the natural and cultural history they contain, can never by replaced by surrogate areas determined more by how out-of-the-way they are from water district activities than by the presence of natural, cultural, and historic features that educators and other community groups value. Developers and wealthy interests should not have the ability to push aside pre-existing public access infrastructure and stigmatize existing recreational and educational uses in areas they want to acquire and build on.  

We need to contact public officials to tell them to protect the discovery site and the roadway that's allowed generations of geology students to visit it!                                                         

1. Sign to let officials in Stanislaus County and the Central Valley know that there are many people who want to see this area protected!    
2. To make sure these calls are not ignored, sign to ask officials in other parts of the state as well to introduce legislation and other emergency measures to protect Allan Bennison's discovery site for future generations of geology and paleontology students!
   

Proponents of the ag water storage project hope to clear their current legal hurdles and get back on track as soon as sometime next year, so we need to act now to save the dino site!