ST. GEORGE — A family of five jumps out of a blue-gray Astro van parked at the edge of Sheldon Johnson's farm and asks, "Where are the dinosaur feet?"
LaVerna, Sheldon's wife, looks at Sheldon. He looks back at her. This makes around 500 visitors today, about average for the past six weeks despite the fact Sheldon and LaVerna have given no public directions on how to reach their farm or allowed any newspapers to publish maps.
"Amazing," they say, "how do they find us?"
Like they should talk.
Calculate these odds.
Dinosaurs walk through St. George, only it isn't St. George then because it is 200 million years ago, they step in thick, gooey clay that allows them to leave behind complete imprints of their feet, which are filled with fine sand that entombs the prints effectively enough to survive the extinction of the dinosaurs, the coming of the mountains, the arrival of man and, finally, the emergence on the scene of Sheldon Johnson driving his front-end loader.
About six weeks ago, while excavating the top of a small mountain on the southwest corner of his farm, Sheldon's shovel accidentally flips over a rock made of mudstone, revealing a dinosaur footprint.
And Sheldon knows what it is!
Now that's amazing.
He'd been digging up the rocks for a few weeks when he made his discovery. Selling them at ten dollars each to landscapers who carried the mudstones off to who knows where. There's no question some landscapers got dinosaur footprints with their rock, no extra charge. But Sheldon can't worry about that now, because since uncovering that first print he's uncovered at least 150 more.
Yes, he and his front-end loader are sitting on the find of 2 million centuries.
Paleontologists have been swarming the place, almost as thick as the school buses and tourist caravans and cars full of families, who search until they find the dinosaur farm.
Once on site, the paleontologists take one look at the perfect imprints and emit an educated "Wow!" They point out exactly what kind of dinosaur was what, and then they point out what each dinosaur was doing while traversing the muck — some were running, some walking, some fishing, some sun-tanning.
One footprint shows the imprint of a big leaf-eating dinosaur stepping on top of the footprint of a smaller, meat-eating dinosaur. A rare dinosaur double. At rush hour.
It's right there, in the middle of the mudrock pile for now, but pretty soon the paleontologists will be back, leg-wrestling for the rights.
So how did Sheldon Johnson, a retired optometrist and not-retired farmer, know he was looking at dinosaur footprints?
It turns out LaVerna's son, Kelly Bringhurst, teaches geology at Dixie College, and even before Sheldon started excavating that hill the professor told him it was Jurassic layer so BE CAREFUL.
When that first rock flipped over, the optometrist could see what was up.
Fortunately, for the paleontologists and geologists, for the tourists, even for the dinosaurs — may they rest in peace — Sheldon and LaVerna are exactly the kind of people you'd want to find a 200-million-year-old treasure.
Not only has Sheldon been digging very carefully ever since, but the Johnsons have turned out to be perfect hosts, opening their farm to one and all and acting as tour guides from dawn to dusk. No charge.
When they get more help — from the city, perhaps, or other organizations dedicated to the preservation of ancient things — they may even publish a detailed map on how to get there.
In the meantime, business is hopping anyway.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.