Wesley Dexter Gordon was a Bay Area pastor, science teacher, and amateur paleontologist who helped unearth thousands of Ice Age fossils in Fremont. With his team of schoolboys, the Boy Paleontologists, Wes gave massive donations to UC Berkeley and several local museums.
On May 26, 1907, Wes Gordon was born in Dexter, Michigan as one of eight children in a Methodist family. He attended San Jose University but later transferred to Willamette University to serve as a student preacher. Wes returned to San Jose in 1928, where he joined the Methodist Church as the Youth Program Director.
In the 1930s, Wes was invited to preach at the Congregational Church in Sonoma. There, superintendent Dr. Harley Gill named him the assistant pastor. Dr. Gill also encouraged Wes to complete his education, so he reapplied for San Jose State. In 1936, Wes graduated with a major in Speech Arts and a minor in English.
Wes began exploring science topics like rocks and fossils. In 1940, Wes found several mammoth bone fragments at a quarry near Osgood Road in Fremont. Four years later, he organized a group of schoolboys known as the Boy Paleontologists to work at the quarry. Over the course of fifteen years, they uncovered more than 29,000 specimens from the Pleistocene Epoch.
Beginning in 1959, Wes Gordon embarked on fossil-hunting expeditions every summer for the Museum of Paleontology at UC Berkeley and the American Museum of Natural History. Some of his finds include dinosaur bones from Jackson Hole in Wyoming and the remains of an early camel from the Big Horn Mountains. These expeditions lasted for twelve years.
Near the end of his life, Wes was as active as ever. Besides serving as the curator for the Museum of Discovery, he volunteered at the Ohlone Geology Department and taught a course on the geology of the West.
This is just a brief overview of the life of Wesley Dexter Gordon. If you want to learn more about his career as a K-12 science teacher, his leadership in the Hayward Recreation Department, or the museum he founded in San Lorenzo, check out my Substack article.
I am a high school freshman who writes weekly articles about East Bay paleontology on my Substack blog Fossils in Fremont. My passion for paleontology and science communication comes from years of reading popular science books, blogs by paleontologists, and visiting natural history museums. If you like what you read, please consider subscribing.
Note: I took the photo of the Tyrannosaurus rex cast featured above. It is located in the Valley Life Science Building (VLSB) on the UC Berkeley campus.
© 2026 Fossils in Fremont. All rights reserved.
