What to See in St. George - Top Sights and Attractions

The St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site is a fossil site and museum at Johnson Farm in Saint George, Utah. The museum preserves thousands of dinosaur footprints right at the original site of discovery.

The site was discovered by accident on February 26, 2000 by Dr. Sheldon Johnson, a retired optometrist and resident of St. George. He was in the process of excavating his property when he stumbled upon a large, naturally cut rock. The rock exposed a natural dinosaur footprint, which Johnson originally thought to be a complete dinosaur fossil due to the quality of the preservation.

Realizing that these dinosaur tracks would be best served if they were maintained for scientific and educational purposes, Dr. Johnson and his wife, LaVerna, worked to set aside the land and its fossils. Eventually the Johnsons donated the tracks that had been found and arranged for the land to be cared for by the City of St. George. They worked with scientists, local businesses, and government officials on the local, state, and national level to create the museum which opened in 2005 that is here today. They set up the foundation that continues to preserve the site as a creative learning environment.

The best preserved and most numerous tracks today form the in-place trackway and exhibits of the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site. Many other fossils including bones of dinosaurs and fish, shells of small aquatic animals, and leaves and seeds of plants, have joined the footprints, enabling paleontologists to reconstruct the nearly 200 million-year-old ecosystem preserved here with unprecedented clarity, an extreme rarity for rocks of any time period.^[1]

Sports arena in St. George, Utah. The Dixie Center is a convention center located in St. George, Utah, United States. It was built in 1998, with renovations taking place in 2006.

The convention center consists of a 46,500-square foot exhibit hall with 30 feet of ceiling height and maximum capacity of 6,785; a 13,205-square-foot ballroom with a 21-foot ceiling height and maximum capacity of 1,886; eleven meeting rooms ranging from 390 to 7,078 square feet and seating from 12 to 900 (there is a total of 16,878 square feet); and a 178-seat auditorium. At the main entrance there is a main and north lobby connected by a 4,300-square-foot concourse, bringing the total to 12,450 square foot, while the garden room is surrounded by 11,760 square feet of prefunction space.

In addition to hosting conventions, trade shows and other special events, Dixie Center is also a multipurpose sports arena. At the exhibit hall, portable seating risers can be brought in reducing maximum capacity to 6,000, while the five mezzanine meeting rooms are convertible into nine luxury suites seating 200, bringing the capacity to 6,200 and making the Dixie Center the largest indoor venue between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, Nevada. Circuses, concerts, ice shows, sporting events, and graduations have been held here.

Controversy over the use of the name "Dixie" arose in 2020. However, the convention center was actually named for what is now Dixie State University, and the center's name was the original name for Burns Arena which opened in 1986. When the current Dixie Center opened, the original venue was renamed to honor Ryder System executive Anthony Burns.^[2]

Historic structure for Mormon worship. The St. George Utah Temple is a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in St. George, Utah. Completed in 1877, it was the church's third temple completed, but the first in Utah, following the migration west of members from Nauvoo, Illinois, following the death of the church's founder, Joseph Smith.

The building is located in the southwestern Utah city of St. George. It was designed by Truman O. Angell and is more similar in its design to the Nauvoo Temple than to the church's later temples. The St. George Temple is the oldest temple still actively used by the church. The temple currently has three ordinance rooms and 18 sealing rooms, and a total floor area of 110,000 square feet. The St. George Utah Temple was the first temple where church members could receive all temple ordinances for their ancestors.^[3]