Discover 8 hidden attractions, cool sights, and unusual things to do in Dinosaur National Monument (United States). Don't miss out on these must-see attractions: Quarry Visitor Center, Gates of Lodore, and Dinosaur Quarry Visitor Center. Also, be sure to include Earl Douglass Workshop-Laboratory in your itinerary.
Below, you can find the list of the most amazing places you should visit in Dinosaur National Monument (Colorado).
Table of Contents
Quarry Visitor Center
Quarry Visitor Center, in Dinosaur National Monument in Utah was built as part of the National Park Service's Mission 66 program of modern architectural design in the US national parks. This visitor center exemplifies the philosophy of locating visitor facilities immediately at the resource being interpreted. The visitor center was closed from 2006 to 2011 due to structural damage from unstable soils. The rotunda structure was demolished and replaced with a new structure of different design, while the quarry section was being stabilized and repaired.[1]
Address: Dinosaur National Monument, 84035 Jensen
Gates of Lodore
The Gates of Lodore is the scenic entrance to the Canyon of Lodore, a canyon on the Green River in northwestern Colorado, United States. The name Gates of Lodore has become synonymous with the canyon itself and the two names are used interchangeably. The Canyon commences as the Green River departs Browns Park and cuts through the Uinta Mountains meandering eighteen miles until its end at Echo Park, the confluence of the Green and Yampa River. It was named by the Powell Expedition after the English poem Cataract of Lodore. It is located in Dinosaur National Monument.[2]
Dinosaur Quarry Visitor Center
Museum, National park
Address: Quarry Visitor Center, 84035 Jensen
Earl Douglass Workshop-Laboratory
Heritage building in Jensen, Utah. The Earl Douglass Workshop-Laboratory was used by Earl Douglass, the discoverer of the dinosaur bone deposits at the dinosaur quarry in Dinosaur National Monument, to preserve, study and prepare fossil specimens. Located next to the quarry adjacent to the Quarry Visitor Center, the workshop is a 10.5-foot by 13.17-foot stone shed with a flat soil roof, built into the hillside. It was built about 1920 by Carnegie Museum of Natural History personnel who were working at the site in eastern Utah.
The workshop was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 16, 1986.[3]
Josie Bassett Morris Ranch Complex
The Josie Bassett Morris Ranch Complex comprises a small complex of buildings in what is now Dinosaur National Monument in northeastern Uintah County, Utah, United States. The complex is listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. It is where Josie Bassett Morris, a small-time rancher and occasional accused stock thief, lived until 1963. The ranch, located in Browns Park, Colorado, was established by the Bassett family in the 1870s. Josie grew up there, and through her family came to know a number of outlaws, including Butch Cassidy, who frequented the area. Morris established her own homestead on Cub Creek in Utah in 1914 with help from friends Fred McKnight and the Chew family.[4]
Rial Chew Ranch Complex
The Rial Chew Ranch Historic District comprises a ranching operation in what is now Dinosaur National Monument in northwestern Colorado, that existed from 1900 to 1949. The Rial Chew family established the ranch in 1900, operating it as a park inholding after the national monument was established in 1919. The district includes a house, a cabin, root cellar, corrals and several storage buildings. The cabin may have been built at Blue Mountain by Harry Chew, and moved to the present site by Jack Chew, Rial's father. The ranch was occupied by the Chew family until their special use permit expired in the early 1970s.[5]
Upper Wade and Curtis Cabin
The Upper Wade and Curtis Cabin was built in 1933 by John Grounds in Dinosaur National Monument. The rustic building served as a guest lodge and ranger station, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the oldest remaining guest accommodation in the park.[6]
Echo Park Dam
Echo Park Dam was proposed in the 1950s by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as a central feature of the Colorado River Storage Project. Situated on the Green River, a major tributary of the Colorado River, the dam was proposed for the Echo Park district of Dinosaur National Monument, flooding much of the Green and Yampa river valleys in the monument. The dam was bitterly opposed by preservationists, who saw the encroachment of a dam into an existing national park as another Hetch Hetchy, to be opposed as an appropriation of protected lands for development purposes. The Echo Park project was abandoned in favor of Glen Canyon Dam on the main stem of the Colorado, in lands that were not at that time protected. This was eventually regarded as a strategic mistake by conservation organizations.[7]