Charlie Moss

One of the first men to have discovered some of the dinosaur and human footprints in the Paluxy river was Glen Rose resident, Charlie Moss. It seems that Charlie Moss’s first encounter with the “Giant Man Tracks” was in 1909 when his friend Ernest “Bull Adams showed him a set of these tracks when they were out on one of their swimming excursions on the Paluxy River.

These tracks became known as the 4th river crossing tracks, and at least 15 local people testified to seeing the same set of tracks in that area. In 1918, another flood ripped up the layer of rock containing the 4th crossing tracks and they were never seen again.

Although this flood destroyed the 4th crossing tracks in 1918, that same flood exposed some new tracks. Mr. Moss, a young man at the time and just back from the first world war, claimed to have found another set of what he described as “giant man tracks” in the location called “Blue Hole” which is now in Dinosaur Valley State Park. The tracks were referred to by local residents as “Charlie’s tracks”. Later these tracks were also washed away in another flood in the early 30’s.

In 1932, Charlie also discovered the first known sauropod tracks in the area and when Roland T. Bird, amateur paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, visited the area in the fall of 1938, Charlie played an important part in Bird’s initial work of locating some of the tracks.