When I first started planning several years ago to visit as many national parks as possible, I was under the false assumption that national parks are always bigger and better than other park units.
My travels have found that there are many other National Park Service units that offer the same experience as a national park, just without the name.
One of the best I’ve found so far is Dinosaur National Monument. Straddling a remote area of the Colorado-Utah border, the park was originally established to protect dinosaur fossils on the Utah side and later expanded to include massive river canyons on the Colorado side.
It’s not until you actually make the long drive to Dinosaur that you realize just how large and important of a site it is.
The deposit of dinosaur fossils was created when a river washed dinosaur remains into a big pile known as the Douglas Quarry. The site is scientifically important for containing more complete dinosaur skeletons than any other location.
Most of the fossils were removed more than a century ago and sent to distant museums, but a portion of the fossil wall was preserved and is now protected by an enclosure that’s open to the public.
A shuttle takes visitors up the hill from the visitor center to see the fossil wall. You can also hike there on the one-mile Fossil Discovery Trail. I chose to take the shuttle up and hike back down, but after seeing the massive fossil wall, those along the trail were a lot harder to appreciate.
The Fossil Discovery Trail also reveals a few samples of another important feature of the park, petroglyphs. There are more petroglyphs at a few pullouts along the scenic drive on the Utah side of the park and many more at other, more remote, sites within the park that I didn’t have a chance to see on this trip.
The Utah side of the park also preserves unique landscapes that you can see from the Sound of Silence Trail, a three-mile loop that (when hiked clockwise) takes you along a wash, mud hills (where it’s completely silent), and uphill to great views of the region. The trail starts out easy and gets more difficult when it heads uphill, and then seems to disappear completely. I pulled out my phone to check a GPS map to make sure I was headed the right way — turned out I was not.
The park is huge and it can take a while to travel from one area to another since the massive canyons prevent roads from crossing directly through the park. But the drive is worth it.
On the Colorado side, the 1.5-mile (one way) trail to the Harper’s Corner overlook is one of the most scenic hikes I’ve ever taken, and the views at the end are even better! From the overlook, you can see the massive Green River canyon to the west and its confluence with the Yampa River to the east. That area, Echo Park, was once the controversial proposed site of a dam that was never built.
There are many more places to visit in Dinosaur that I couldn’t get to on my two-night stay. Next time!
Scientifically significant fossils. Native American cultural history. Resplendent canyons. All of this left me asking myself, why isn’t this a national park?
It turns out there really isn’t any difference between a “park” and a “monument” other than the name. The Park Service manages both the same way. Many well-known national parks, even the Grand Canyon, were originally monuments.
The difference is in how they are established. Creating a national park requires Congressional approval, but the president can create a national monument through an executive order. Through history, many of these monuments have eventually been converted to park status, including White Sands and Pinnacles within the last decade.
The upgrade, in name only, brings a park a lot more attention. After all, the bookshelves in the travel section are filled with books about national parks, not national monuments.
So, why haven’t Dinosaur and other places I’ve visited, such as Organ Pipe and Colorado National Monument, been converted to national park status? It could just be that Congress hasn’t gotten around to it yet.
In the meantime, enjoy these hidden gems before more people realize they exist!
Read about more of my roadtrip adventures in the Off Topic category!