Dinosaur: A tale of two monuments

Quarry wall in Dinosaur National Monument

Echo Park Overlook, Colorado unit (but still in Utah)

The temperature passed 100 degrees by the time I hit Utah, not the best introduction from this corner of the Beehive State. I finished sparkling water and Gatorade but never felt hydrated. 

After almost 8 hours of driving and a 4 a.m. start, I could taste Dinosaur National Monument. The scant miles before Jensen, the monument turnoff, clicked off fast. The Green River delivered upon its name. 

Even in this parched desert, a ribbon of healthy foliage signaled the river’s path. A crowded visitor center awaited, with few places to escape the masses. But it beat the heat. 

After a throng boarded the shuttle to the quarry site, I inquired about the 1-mile hike. The ranger advised against it, as it was all uphill. Walk back down and the winds in the canyon will cool you down, he said. The shuttle was open-air. 

After the crowd I first saw dispersed, only a handful of people took the next trip. The driver walked us through the different geologic layers we passed as the bus ascended a small hill. I scrambled into the quarry building to escape the heat. With its giant glass walls, the heat still had a presence. Entering the second floor, it took me a few seconds to realize what loomed before me. I had trouble believing my eyes. 

The quarry was not the big pit I expect, but the side of a mountain. The quarry building housed an entire wall of the hillside protected with hundreds of dinosaur bones preserved in situ. I had to ask a ranger, who assured me I was not viewing a recreation. 

The wall runs several hundred feet and includes more than 500 fossils, mostly from large dinosaur species such as apatosaurus, camarasaurus, and diplodocus. Leg bones stand out because of their size, but the wall also reveals skills and more. Allosaurus was the most common predator. Not all the bones stayed, since its discoverer, Earl Douglass of the Carnegie Museum, so many specimens wound up displayed in Pittsburgh. 

The quarry is unusual became most fossils come from large species; flooding on the river washed away remains of smaller species that were contemporaries of the larger dinosaurs. The quarry wall is one of nature’s works of art. All those dinosaur fossils in one place. Mass die-offs produce fossil beds in many places, but I could not imagine the quarry wall till I saw it. 

 All thoughts of walking down the trail evaporated as I stepped outside. The shuttle would work just fine on this blistering day. Most visitors stop at the quarry and travel onward. A left turn into the Utah section of Dinosaur yielded more vistas and quiet spots. Campgrounds looked half-full along the Green. 

 At Placer Point, I came down to the riverbank, the murky Green River coursing toward its union with the Colorado several hundred miles south in Canyonlands National Park’s Island in the Sky. The red rock walls on the opposite bank were stained with storms and floods of many millennia. Even a few miles from the quarry, traffic plummeted. I shared the bank with some pollinators, mostly bees, and enjoy the steady flow of the Green. That night I stayed in Vernal, west of the monument, so I had easy access to the park’s less-seen Colorado unit the next morning. 

Vernal has every chain hotel imaginable plus local operators. That didn't appeal to me on this stop. I found a fine vacation rental in a small event center, which had a half-dozen large hotel rooms and large backyard with a gazebo and relaxing patio. I had a burger at Vernal Brewing Company, returned for a two-hour, then headed to the patio for a few hours of chill time. I didn't see another person aside from kids at the KOA playground screaming with glee several hundred yards away. 

Eventually I wandered the vacant property and reached the street where 18-wheelers moved at highway speeds. Across the street from my hotel, horses grazed in fly masks that looked like blinders but kept insects from attacking their faces. At dusk I watched then and they briefly took stock of me before galloping across their meadow. 

I had no idea how light Dinosaur’s traffic could get until I entered the Colorado portion of the national monument. The Colorado section only receives one-tenth of the visitors of the Utah section. That hardly seems surprising, since the Colorado section contains no dinosaur fossils. 

But the backcountry of Dinosaur has wonders that the stretch of the Green River near the quarry only hints at. The original monument only encompassed 80 acres around the quarry. The 1938 expansion added 240,000 acres of iconic western canyonlands. 

I quickly asceneded from the visitor center (this side of the monument charges no fee), sat in a construction with an automatic traffic light, and dealt with a road full of Mormon crickets. I first spotted a bug here and there on U.S. 40. In Colorado unit, they grew thick on the roads and I gave up on avoiding them. Tire-track stains of past generations of Mormon crickets lined the road. 

Mormon crickets in numbers

 Mormon cricket I can dodge

Open range came back in. The road was federal property but in some places completely surrounded by ranchland.  The cattle usually stayed along the side, but sometimes they didn't, so I never went too fast. 

As I crossed this path of spectacular, unpopulated land, I though to what could have been. Presidential protection didn’t end the risks to Dinosaur. In the 1950s, Bureau of Reclamation plans for a dam that would have submerged these wonders nearly came to fruition before spirited opposition from the Sierra Club and other environmental advocates ended the push for new dams in national parks. Lack of people made it an ideal location to dam-builders. Looking down upon Echo Park, what could have been lost is stunning. A dam would have covered the Echo Park in water, Steamboat Rock and more disappearing in its murky waters. 

Seventeen miles north of the confluence, the Green enters the park at the Gates of Lodore, an imposing entrance to the Canyon of Lodore formed by rock walls hundreds of feet tall. On this trip, I could not venture there – by car, the Gates lie 106 miles from the Colorado visitor center in Dinosaur. 

Outside of the Harpers Corners Road, nothing felt especially accessible. It wasn’t, and that was the point. The protected hard-to-access places, and the public areas only offer glimpses. 

 Off Harpers Corners, Echo Park Road runs 13 rugged miles from the Colorado park road, dropping more than 1,000 feet in its first mile. The road requires 4x4 and its clay surface turns impassable in rain. 

Some have discussed Dinosaur as a possible national park contender, but its poor infrastructure would require millions - if not billions - in investments. The ranger I talked to said there would be a need for bridges to make that work. That probably cements Dinosaur’s national monument status, although that keeps the masses from descending upon the stunning canyonlands. 

I wasn’t turning around until I reached the Echo Park Overlook. Thoughts of going to the Harpers Corner trail at the road's end faded as the heat began to stick. 

Still, this overlook gave me the view I wanted. If I could not reach the iconic non-fossil feature of Dinosaur, I would at least see it from a great distance. I contemplated finishing the drive to Harpers Corners and hiking to the lookout, but I started a few hours too late and the heat began to flex its muscles. 

From a great distance, Steamboat Rock is easily visible as the centerpiece of Echo Park. Here the Green River meets the Yampa River at a mighty bend, with Steamboat Rock looming high above the waters. A squiggling side canyon marked the Yampa's flow entering the Green.

As with all overlooks, I was alone. All noise faded away. No cars, just the occasion squeaks from the Mormon crickets. I had no interest in picking them up, but I didn’t mind their company, even as legions of their dead sat crushed on my tires. 

 The waters continued their work on carving Echo Park, the audience watching the majesty of rock and waters small as always.

Keep the scenery with you.