Photo submitted by Diane Douglass Iverson This is Orchid Draw as it looked in 1913. The photo was taken by Earl Douglass, discoverer of the large dinosaur quarry in Utah. It shows Earl’s wife, Pearl, and their five year old son, Gawin. This was the summer retreat for the family who lived in the tents and planted the garden and orchard.

If the land exchange is approved in Congress then Orchid Draw will be purchased and turned over to the National Park Service.

The current owners of Orchid Draw are Diane Douglass Iverson and Mary Douglass. The two sisters are the granddaughters of Earl Douglass, the paleontologist with Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh who found eight dinosaur tailbones sticking out of a hill in Utah. That 1909 discovery led to the Dinosaur National Monument being established in 1915.

Orchid Draw is surrounded by Dinosaur National Monument. It's an 80-acre ravine where Earl Douglass, his wife Pearl and his son, Gawin had their summer home. The home was a boarded tent. A little spring irrigated the land and there was an orchard. The property got its name from a rare orchid which thrived there. Her grandfather viewed their property "as a little oasis."

Diane's first memories of Dinosaur National Monument (DNM) was at the close of World War II in 1945. "We never lived there. We always owned that 80 acres and that's part of where my father grew up. We would go back there because he was so attached to that country. And we heard the stories from day one."

Diane edited a book authored by her father entitled, "Speak To the Earth and It Will Teach You." The book is about the life and times of Earl Douglass. He was a prolific diary writer.

Diane never got to meet grandfather who died in 1931. "When we would go back to that 80 acres, [Dad] would tell the stories. So I feel like I know my grandfather because Dad talked about him so much."

Diane says her grandfather was an educator, "but more than that he was such a dedicated scientist. He wanted to know truth and he thought he could find it from the earth, from digging up the fossils. He was dedicated to teaching it to other people."

Diane continued, "He earned the first master's degree from the University of Montana here in Missula. That was in 1893. Then he went on, earned all the credits, he took all the courses to earn a doctorate at Princeton and he never did the thesis, but he was called Dr. Douglass because he just kept studying taking courses and he was also a poet and a philosopher. He wrote a lot of poems which my father included in his book."

Today Orchid Draw is part of their heritage, very dear to her and her sister. They have hiked Orchid Draw many times. "You kind of have a sense of the man who was a nature lover. It means a great deal to us. We go back as often as possible and camp there. It's just a wonderful place," Diane said. "We were there for the grand opening of the Great Wall, and I spoke about my grandfather and how important that discovery was to him."

The Great Wall is a wall of dinosaur bones at the monument. Her grandfather had a desire to leave the bones in relief as a teaching tool.

"He had dreamt there would be a building around it so people could come up and look. That happened in 1957, but then that building was condemned. It was reopened in Oct. 2011," Diane said. Utah Gov. Gary Richard Herbert was there. "It really was a pretty amazing opening. They've done a super job at the visitors' center. It was reopened Oct. 4, 2011, which was a 100 years from when it had been set aside as a national monument. It was a special time for it to be reopened."

When the land exchange bill died in a congressional committee in 2010, it was a disappointment to Diane and her sister. They had wanted to announce Orchid Draw was becoming part of the Dinosaur National Monument.

"Whatever happens, happens. But we would like for this to become part of the DNM," Diane said. "And so we were really disappointed about that. We're still hoping it might go through. If it doesn't, something else will happen I'm sure."

Diane says the ravine is now more wild. The orchard and garden are gone. "The gullies have eroded away. There have been flash floods that have come through there. And so, I guess for DNM, they are thinking there could be dinosaur deposits. There might be fossils no one has ever thought about," Diane said. The exploration and science make the land valuable for the DNM. "For me. . .it's more just the beauty of canyons that Utah and Colorado have. You know, just the wild land."

Diane and her sister don't want the land to be passed on to their six heirs. "We feel like in order to honor our grandfather's memory we would like the land to be a part of the National Park System. And so, it would mean a great deal to us to have this finished. We would like to have it completed in our lifetime. I'm 73. My sister is 77. We are just hoping this can be completed."

It was Mary Risser, the National Park Service superintendent, who suggested to the Douglass sisters to work with Western Land Group. "We thought that this might be the best way. There have been people who would like to buy the land, private entities who would buy the land and we could probably receive more money, but we decided we would like to have it included in the park and so we started thinking of ways this could be done," Diane said. "We didn't realize how complicated and how it was involved with so much else."

They don't know Bill Koch but realize he was willing to buy their land and use it in a land trade. "From reading the articles there sure are pros and cons, aren't there?" Diane commented. "I want the best for all people."

She encourages people to visit Dinosaur National Monument and to read the book by her father. "It's a pretty amazing account of a man who lived in the wilderness for years and years."