Goodsell Ridge Fossil Preserve
Quarry Road
Isle La Motte, VT
Flat slabs of gray limestone underfoot hold the coiled shells and sponge-like reef builders of a tropical sea that vanished before fish, before dinosaurs, before anything walked on land.
Goodsell Ridge Fossil Preserve is a stretch of open meadow and bare gray rock on Isle La Motte where you can walk directly across the Chazy Reef, one of the oldest fossil coral-type reefs known anywhere in the world. The limestone slabs at your feet formed roughly 450 to 480 million years ago, in the Ordovician period, when this ground lay under a shallow tropical sea south of the equator.
What makes the site remarkable is not just the age but the readability. The fossils are right there on the surface, weathered into relief by centuries of Vermont winters: coiled and straight-shelled sea creatures, snails, and the mound-building stromatoporoids that helped bind the whole reef together. It is a rare place where deep time is something you can crouch down and touch.
What Guests Love
- Standing on one of the oldest known fossil reefs anywhere on Earth
- Spotting coiled snail shells, straight-shelled cephalopods, and sponge-like stromatoporoids in the rock
- An open, unhurried walk across meadow and exposed limestone with interpretive signs
- A small welcome center barn that helps you read what you are looking at
Worth Knowing
- The preserve is free and cared for by the Isle La Motte Preservation Trust; donations keep it open
- Fossils are protected, so look closely and photograph but leave every specimen in place
- There is little shade, so bring water and sun protection in summer
- The welcome barn keeps limited seasonal hours, but the trails are walkable on your own
Details
Isle La Motte, VT
Learn about Goodsell Ridge Fossil Preserve
A reef older than backbones
When the Chazy Reef was alive, there were no fish with jaws, no plants on land, and no animals of any kind out of the water. The reef was built in warm, shallow seas by early invertebrates, and it records one of the first times in the fossil record that many different kinds of organisms worked together to construct a single reef community.
The rock here is part of a formation that geologists have studied for well over a century, and Isle La Motte holds some of its clearest exposures. The reef builders included stromatoporoids, sponge-like animals that grew in layered mounds, along with early corals, and the sediment around them is packed with the shells of snails and cephalopods, the ancestral relatives of today's squid and nautilus.
Because the whole island once sat far south of the equator and has drifted north over hundreds of millions of years, the fossils are a reminder that even the ground of northern Vermont has traveled an enormous distance across the face of the planet.
From quarry stone to protected preserve
The same hard limestone that holds the fossils was prized as building stone. Isle La Motte's quarries produced a dark stone often sold as black marble that was shipped out for use in buildings across the region, and quarrying shaped the island's economy and its immigrant workforce for generations.
Goodsell Ridge itself was later set aside for its scientific value rather than its stone. The Isle La Motte Preservation Trust protects the land and maintains the trails and a modest welcome center in a barn, where volunteers lay out specimens and explanations so visitors can understand the reef without needing a geology degree.
It is a genuinely community-run place, kept open by local stewardship and donations rather than admission fees, which is part of its quiet charm.
Walking the ground today
A network of mowed paths loops across the meadows and over the exposed rock, with signs pointing out what to look for. The best fossils appear where the limestone has been scoured clean, and low-angle light in the morning or late afternoon throws their shapes into sharper relief.
The setting is pastoral and peaceful. Bobolinks and other grassland birds nest in the surrounding fields, monarch butterflies work the milkweed in summer, and the flat island horizon opens toward Lake Champlain in the distance.
Give yourself time to move slowly. The preserve rewards the visitor who is willing to stop, kneel, and really look at the rock rather than walk over it.
Season by season
Late spring and summer bring wildflowers, nesting grassland birds, and the fullest access to the welcome center and its displays.
Early fall is comfortable for walking, with cooler air and clearer light for reading the fossils, and the island's apple orchards near harvest.
Winter snow buries the rock and the interpretive value with it, so the fossils are really a snow-free-season attraction; call the season closed once the ground is covered.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Isle La Motte
St. Anne's Shrine
About 3 miles, a 7 minute drive
A lakeside Catholic shrine on the site of Fort Sainte Anne, Vermont's oldest European settlement, with grounds open to walk.
Isle La Motte historic quarries
About 2 miles
The island's black-marble quarry sites, whose stone traveled to buildings across the Northeast, part of the same reef limestone.
North Hero
About 9 miles, a 20 minute drive
A neighboring Champlain island with a classic general store, lake access, and island-country quiet.