Kayleigh Johnson’s fascination with fossils started as a young girl living in Southern Colorado. To her, the Rocky Mountains revealed much more than a picturesque landscape. They revealed a glimpse into the past.
“I have loved learning about the past since I was a child. I grew up in the Rockies of Southern Colorado finding fossils and cool rocks with my dad. I really had a curiosity of the natural world from a young age. I never grew out of that passion.”
That curiosity led her to the South Dakota School of Mines of Technology where she earned her bachelor’s degree in geology in 2017 and her master’s in paleontology in 2018. “SD Mines has a great geology program and the only master’s in paleontology in the nation. I wanted to move back west from living in the south for some time. I was welcomed so warmly when I visited campus; I knew this is where I needed to attend.”
However, her college visit was not her first to the School of Mines.
During her senior year of high school, Kayleigh toured the Museum of Geology, located on campus. “I was very impressed by the museum because it had an equal number of displays on paleontology and geology. I figured it would be mostly geology based on my previous experiences with similar museums.”
Kayleigh is now the assistant director of the century-old museum, a position she has aspired to for many years.
“Growing up there was a community college that had a little museum there, and I remember spending many hours in there thinking that is something I would want to do,” she said.
It is not only the fossils that Johnson finds fascinating, but the history of the museum. Her “pandemic project” was creating an exhibit of the museum’s timeline that is on display in the Paleontology Research Lab and was highlighted during the museum’s recent centennial celebration.
While the Museum of Geology recently celebrated its 100th anniversary of being open to the public, its history started many years prior. “We were founded in 1885, a few years before South Dakota became a state,” Johnson said.
The Museum of Geology was founded alongside the Dakota School of Mines, the name of the university at the time, with a donation of more than 5,000 fossils and mineral specimens from Professor Gilbert Bailey. “When people think of the South Dakota Mines, they may not think of the Museum of Geology right away. However, we’ve been there since the start, and several of our past presidents were geologists and paleontologists by training.”
Initially, the specimens were used as a teaching tool for students and faculty, but not available to the public, Johnson said.
Cataloging the fossils started in 1899 when Professor Cleophas O’Harra, the driving force behind M Hill, the football stadium, and the iconic freshman beanies, became president of the university. “He was really influential to campus, but people forget that he was a paleontologist,” she said.
O’Harra would take students out for a week in horse-drawn wagons educating them on the area and hunting for fossils. “He was really the driver into making us a museum, although not yet making us open to the public,” Johnson said.
With the help of Professor Guy March, the museum opened its door to the public in 1923 providing a bridge and an educational resource to the community.
Johnson estimates the museum has around 500,000 specimens with many still needing to be cataloged. “We have a huge back log. For every hour it takes to collect something in the field, it takes 10 to 20 hours to prepare and process it. We still have jackets that haven’t been opened since they’ve been collected in 1928.”
The collection may include some of Bailey’s original specimens, however, it is not known for sure. The first specimen, the front portion of Alligator prenasalis’ stout and lower jaw, was cataloged in 1899. “It is a very unassuming piece and quite small,” Johnson said. “It was the first fossil of this kind of alligator which would have lived in the White River Badlands area around 35 million years ago. I had the privilege of creating reproductions of this specimen when I was the preparator and lab manager at the museum. That was a lot of fun.”
Johnson’s hope is to retain the decades-long history of the museum while updating it to the modern century. She is working with the American Alliance of Museums on an assessment. “We’ve been looking at our interpretation, exhibits and education programming and seeing where we want to go from here.”
Johnson said they will never get rid of the mounts and dioramas that have been there since the early 1900s but want to advance the interpretations. For example, the Edmontosaurus mount has an incorrect stance. “In the early days of paleontology, we thought many dinosaurs would have drug their tails on the ground. We have found fossil evidence that suggest their tails would have been much stiffer and would have been held off the ground.” Kayleigh added the Edmontosaurus likely walked on four legs instead of two.
“We have something that says, ‘look how science has changed.’ That is really cool.”
In 2020, the Museum of Geology received accreditation from the AAM, only the second natural history museum in South Dakota to receive the honor. The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs is also accredited. AAM accreditation signifies a museum’s quality and credibility to the museum community, government, outside agencies, and the public.
The accreditation along with the museum’s assessment will help provide a roadmap along with funding to move it forward.
“I would like to see us grow our interpretation and education side. How can we modernize and bring the museum up to the 21st Century and how can we give back to the community more?”
Johnson said much of the museum’s success is due to the student workers. “They are a vital part of the museum. They are the first people visitors meet when they come to the museum, and they are the ones that help facilitate tours and learning at the museum. We have been able to make the museum a welcoming and safe environment for everyone, and that really starts with my student workers.”
With around 30,000 visitors to the museum each year, Johnson hopes each one learns something new.
“I hope that our visitors can walk away with fond memories of our museum and learn something new about their world. I hope they feel a sense of belonging to the natural world, and awe for how complex nature and the Earth can be.”
And maybe even inspire some to become future paleontologists and geologists.
Check out more articles from the Elevate Rapid City Magazine - August Issue HERE!