Dinosaur National Monument: Quarry Exhibit Hall - July 24, 2020
We have been to Dinosaur National Monument a couple of times before. The last time was back in June (Dinosaur National Monument - June 3rd to 5th, 2020). Both times the Quarry Exhibit Hall was closed. The quarry had opened back up, so, as we made our way from Steamboat Lake to Vega State Park, we stopped at Dinosaur National Monument just to check out the dinosaur fossils.
At Steamboat Lake State Park, we got up early and were on the road before 9:30 am, even after driving over to the Dutch Hill area to dump our gray water tanks. It was raining all morning with temperatures in the 60’s. Great weather for driving. As we approached Dinosaur National Monument, the rain cleared up, the sun came out, and the temperatures rose into the 80’s. We went straight to the Quarry Visitor Center. It was open this time. A shuttle bus runs people up to the Quarry Exhibit Hall every 15 minutes. Another option is to walk the one-mile Fossil Discovery Trail up to the quarry. We chose to ride the shuttle bus up and walk the trail on the way back. It was 10:30 am and we only had to wait 15 minutes for the next shuttle. The staff was disinfecting the shuttle between each ride and only one household occupied a row on the shuttle, with every other row left empty.
The Quarry Exhibit Hall is two stories tall and encloses the side of the cliff in air conditioning. In the cliff, 1500 dinosaur bones are visible, from about 100 individual dinosaurs. That does not include the fossils already collected from this quarry, from about 400 different dinosaurs. We were surprised by how many fossils there were to see. We were only expecting about a dozen or so, not over a thousand! It was a very impressive sight to see. We’re glad we came back and finally got to go into the Quarry Exhibit Hall. The hall also includes a few displays and informational signs.
From 1909 to 1924, several hundred tons of fossils were removed from the quarry and sent to museums around the country. Then, from the 1950’s to the 1990’s, excavation removed just enough rock to expose the 1500 fossils, leaving them in place in the cliff. It was fulfilling a request by the man who originally started the quarry and oversaw most of its early years of excavation, Earl Douglass. According to one of the signs inside the Exhibit Hall, he sent a letter to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1923 that read “I hope that the Government, for the benefit of science and the people, will uncover a large area, leave the bones and skeletons in relief and house them in. It would make one of the most astounding and instructive sights imaginable.” We could not agree more. Seeing the fossils as they were found embedded in the rock provided another level of understanding that could not be obtained from seeing the excavated bones in a museum. We are so glad that Earl Douglass’s dream was eventually realized.
There are some clam fossils to see along the trail back to the visitor center, but they were hard to see. It was hard to distinguish a clam fossil from embedded rocks. There were also some petroglyphs along the trail. Although the trail was not as impressive as the exhibit hall, it was a nice way to stretch our legs on a mostly driving day.
We ate our lunch at one of the covered picnic tables bordering the visitor center parking lot. From there, it was less than hour’s drive to our stop for the night, Rangely Camper Park in Rangely, Colorado.
We found Rangely Camper Park on Campendium, the app we use the most to find places to stay. The campground is run by the city and is first come/first serve. We arrived around 2 pm and had no trouble finding an electric hook-up site. We wanted electric hook ups because we were concerned it was going to be hot and we wanted to run our air conditioner. However, the campground is nestled in the shade of a grove of cottonwood trees and the temperature was very comfortable, in the 70’s. We took an electric site anyway to keep our batteries fully charged while we cooked sweet potatoes in the Instant Pot (paid link) for dinner. The electric sites were $20 while the non-electric were $15. Not a bad price for a camp site with a dump station, water, flush toilets and hot showers.
Even though the campground is in a nice setting, nestled in the trees next to the White River, it is right on the edge of town. Before dinner we took a short walk down Main Street to the Nickols Store and bought ice cream bars. The next morning, we took showers at Rangely Camper Park before we left. The door to the woman’s shower did not lock, but thankfully the door was inside the woman’s restroom, unlike the door to the men’s shower which opened to the outside.
We had heard great things about the Quarry Exhibit Hall, but seeing it in person exceeded our expectations. We are so glad we made a point to go back to see it. The added bonus was discovering the nice little campground in Rangely. Being able to revisit a place renews our resolve to resist the urge to try to see everything when we visit a new place. Slow down, enjoy what you do see and leave the rest for the next visit, whenever that may be.
Check out our related video: Dinosaur NM Quarry Exhibit Hall
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