Top--A portion of main street in La Porte, California, elevation roughly 5,000 feet, Sierra Nevada, California--staging area for the fabulous plant fossils at an abandoned hydraulic gold mine in the general vicinity of town. A Google Earth street car perspective that I edited and processed through photoshop. Bottom--A vintage circa 1935 photograph of the plant-bearing section exposed at an abandoned hydraulic gold mine in the neighborhood of La Porte, Sierra Nevada, California. Letters (in black) on photograph represent the following: T--the upper Eocene leaf-bearing La Porte Tuff exposed at the rim; CS--the middle Eocene leaf and carbonized wood-bearing shales which disconformably underlie the La Porte Tuff; QG--the middle Eocene auriferous gravels (gold-bearing) that underlie the shales and La Porte Tuff. Photograph courtesy Susan S. Potbury, from her publication The La Porte Flora Of Plumas County, California, originally issued November 25, 1935; contained in Carnegie Institute of Washington Publication 465, 1937, Eocene Flora Of Western America. I edited and processed it through photoshop.

Note--Always check with the US Forest Service to determine if unauthorized fossil collecting is allowed at the La Porte locality.