Fossil Country — Fossil Butte & the JCPenney Mother Store at Kemmerer

Two hours south of Jackson, on the high sagebrush plateau of southwest Wyoming, sits one of the richest fossil deposits on the planet and the birthplace of an American retail empire. Fifty million years ago a subtropical lake covered this ground, and its fine limestone laminae preserved fish, stingrays, birds, turtles, and even palm fronds in astonishing detail — the reason Fossil Butte was set aside as a national monument. A few miles east, the small coal town of Kemmerer holds a different kind of history: the original 1902 JCPenney 'Mother Store,' where James Cash Penney launched what became one of the country's largest retail chains, and a compact historic downtown built around a triangular town square. This day pairs deep geologic time with turn-of-the-century Main Street America.