Colorado’s sesquicentennial this year is a once-in-a-lifetime excuse to explore the state that more than 95 million vacationers visit each year. Where else can you traverse portions of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and Western Slope in one statewide road trip, spotting pronghorn, prairie dogs, bison and bighorn sheep along the way?
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But to really understand Colorado, plan some outings that take you off the beaten tracks to visit what’s no longer here, except in rock and fossil form.
Colorado has some of the most fascinating and accessible geological and paleontological sites on Earth, a fact few people were only starting to glean in 1876. One-hundred-fifty years of scientific study has revealed surprising details about Colorado’s past, like a coastline where dinosaurs migrated and sometimes gathered to dance like today’s birds during mating season. (That was happening just 20 miles west of Denver during the Cretaceous period, and you can go see the evidence at Dinosaur Ridge.)
There are 10 locations around the state where you can pay homage to creatures that called Colorado home millions of years ago. Their fossils help us understand what a very different place this was and will be. Seeing tracks and bones could alter your perspective on humanity’s place in the world.
Colorado’s dinosaur fossil history is world-renowned
The year Colorado became the 38th state, an Episcopalian minister from the U.K. was eking out a living teaching people how to paint and read the rocks in the burgeoning town of Golden. Arthur Lakes was an Oxford-educated Brit with a skill for interpreting geological formations and a knack for finding dinosaur fossils. In 1874, Lakes and a student would unknowingly collect the world’s first Tyrannosaurus rex tooth on Golden’s South Table Mountain. (The tooth sat in a drawer in the Yale Peabody Museum unidentified until 2000, when visiting Denver Museum of Nature and Science paleontologist Ken Carpenter took a look and recognized it for what it is.)
Then, in April 1876, Lakes and a colleague were climbing the hogback east of Red Rocks near Morrison when they came upon large bone fossils eroding out of the sandstone. This find would lead to the naming of several now-iconic dinosaurs, including Colorado’s state fossil, the Stegosaurus. It would also spark Bone Wars. You can visit the site of that historic quarry along Dinosaur Ridge and see bone fragments still embedded in the rock.
The Front Range
Denver: The Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS) is currently hosting a traveling exhibition called “The World’s Largest Dinosaurs.” Check it out before it ends on Sept. 7, and seek out the “Teen Rex Prep Lab,” where a beautiful juvenile specimen is being carefully removed from its rock matrix. Since its opening in 1908, DMNS has grown into a powerhouse of educational science exhibits and paleo collections. It’s a perfect indoor starting point for a cross-Colorado dino-themed adventure.
Golden: Ease into your outdoor journey with a trio of easy hiking trails. As you drive into Golden on Sixth Avenue, just before the 19th Street exit, look to your right for an eye-catching mural on a shed painted by local artist Julia “The Designosaur” Williams. It marks the spot where Triceratops Trail begins along the edge of the Fossil Trace Golf Course, where a one-time clay-mining operation revealed fossil evidence of Late Cretaceous life.
Download an audio tour and explore at your leisure, or join a guided tour along the gravel path to see upright sandstone outcrops (fins) containing convex (aka “outie”) footprints of horned dinosaurs, hadrosaurs and the king of the tyrant lizards, the T-rex.
Geologist Bob Mason leads tours in Golden and Morrison as a volunteer for the nonprofit Friends of Dinosaur Ridge. “Triceratops Trail is one of the few places in the world where there is evidence of dinosaurs and mammals existing together,” Mason said. “And there are numerous plant fossils in the outcrops that are clear indicators of the warm, humid climate that existed in Colorado when the dinosaurs were here.”
Mason also recommends the Bob Weimer Geology Trail on the Colorado School of Mines campus. This self-guided trail begins at the Mines Museum of Earth Science, where you can pick up a brochure. Take some time inside this beautiful free museum to see spectacular mineral, fossil and space rock collections before you hit the trail. An outcrop of sandstone containing dozens of dinosaur footprints sits like a crown at the top of your walk.
Finish up across town at the newly opened T. Rex Tooth Trail on Golden’s South Table Mountain. There you can take in gorgeous views while picturing the land once populated by tropical plants, megafauna and flowing lava streams. Maybe head to New Terrain Brewing Company for refreshments and to relax with yet more dazzling views as you plot your next trip.
Morrison: The section of Dakota Hogback that runs between the Interstate 70 road cut and the entrance to the town of Morrison is called Dinosaur Ridge for good reason. The Denver-facing side of the ridge contains the largest dinosaur courtship site ever found, with fossilized scrape marks made by three-toed, bipedal meat-eaters. Further up the paved road, a rock slope containing more than 250 footprints made by 39 different animals — including three species of dinosaurs — crisscrosses the ancient beach. Paleontologists have ranked this the No. 1 dinosaur tracksite in America for its abundance and variety of tracks, and for its accessibility.
The Red Rocks-facing side of the ridge features exposed Jurassic-age sandstone layers where an ancient river system tumbled bones into a sandy graveyard. You’ll also see a row of bulging compressions in layers of stone made 150 million years ago by something super heavy, and a rare raptor footprint. Dinosaur Ridge is part of Jefferson County Parks and Open Space and is free and open daily from sunrise to sunset for walkers and bicyclists.
Two small visitor centers are located on either side of Dinosaur Ridge. From the main visitor center at C-470 and Alameda Parkway, you can take a guided bus tour or a walking tour. Kids can dig for fossil replicas and pose for photos next to life-sized dinosaur statues, or pan for treasures in the sluice machine.
On the western side, you’ll find Colorado’s newest paleo museum experience in a small building at Entrance 1 to Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre. The new Deep Time Detour exhibition in the Martin G. Lockley Discovery Center is open daily; RTD has just launched a free weekend shuttle called Westracks that stops there.
The shuttle runs between the Jeffco Government Center and the Morrison Natural History Museum, with stops along the way that include Red Rocks through Labor Day weekend. The museum is a two-story log cabin filled with fossils and displays that tell the story of both Dinosaur Ridge discoveries and nearby Ice Age mammals. Some of the Stegosaurus bones collected by Lakes are displayed there.
Back at the Lockley Center, you can take a guided walk through Colorado’s prehistoric past starting 300 million years ago and ending at the most recent Ice Age. Colorful life-sized artistic sculptures were intentionally built to touch. Some delightful animatronics show the movements of Colorado creatures like a swimming mosasaur and hatchlings in an Edmontosaurus nest.
Amy Atwater, director of paleontology at Dinosaur Ridge, is the lead visionary behind the exhibition. The Colorado transplant has led paleo tours in three countries, published a children’s book called “The Fossil Keeper’s Treasure,” and appeared on Rocky Mountain PBS during its “Dino Week” programming as a guest expert.
“Our exhibit is really about celebrating the incredible fossil and geologic record that we have here in Colorado that starts before the time of the dinosaurs all the way to the incredible fossils that have been found after the dinosaurs went extinct, when Colorado had giant redwoods like what you see in Northern California today,” Atwater said. “We had rhino relatives with forked horns on their faces, early horse relatives, strange mammals, and of course mammoths and mastodons and giant ground sloths and saber toothed cats.”
In southern Colorado
Woodland Park: The Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park is both a fun place to see cool exhibits featuring real and replica fossils, and is one of the country’s top commercial paleontology operations as well. Mike Triebold started the business in the 1980s by collecting and preparing marine fossils from Kansas. The center is open daily, and lab work happens before your eyes with new displays being prepared year-round.
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Cañon City: Seeing dinosaur fossils cleaned up and beautifully presented in museums is amazing. Seeing dinosaur bones and tracks in the wild is altogether mind-blowing. And in Cañon City, seeing them on a unique one-way road called Skyline Drive is an adventure.
Amanda Rea is a grad student in the geology program at Colorado School of Mines who has studied numerous fossil sites around the West. Nothing compares to the time she drove a tour van full of passengers across the narrow one-lane road built by prisoners in 1905.
“Skyline Drive is not for the faint of heart but is definitely worth the adventure,” Rea said. “The drive is almost three miles long and takes you across the top of a razorback ridge with steep dropoffs on either side and beautiful views any direction you look. There are no guard rails and only occasional shoulders. Once you begin, there’s no turning back.”
The road crew never knew it, but exposed ankylosaurid tracks protrude from one rock wall near the top. The once flat, muddy and marshy terrain is approximately 100 million years old. Plant-eating dinos that looked like huge, armored lizards left those footprints while tramping near the coastline of a vast Western Interior Seaway that extended into Colorado. About 100 yards past the site, you can pull over and park, then walk back to see them up close.
La Junta: Serious hikers are in for a treat at the Comanche National Grassland south of La Junta. The largest dinosaur tracksite in North America is preserved there in the Purgatoire River bedrock. More than 1,900 individual footprints from giant, long-necked dinos like the Apatosaurus and the meat-eating Allosaurus left prints in what was soft ground 150 million years ago.
These concave footprints (aka “innies”) are sometimes filled with water, making a series of puddles you can follow. Paleoichnologists (who specialize in the study of trace fossils) say the parallel tracks reveal the social behavior of huge sauropods moving side-by-side in groups.
The Picket Wire Canyon Trail is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which cautions that only those in excellent condition should make the trek on foot, mountain bike, or horseback. High-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicles with reservations can also pay for an auto tour. There are no amenities, and overnight camping is not allowed.
The 11.2-mile round-trip hike must be done in daylight hours, and carrying at least a gallon of drinking water is recommended. The remoteness of these tracks keeps them well protected; wildlife like bobcats, bald eagles and rattlesnakes live here mostly undisturbed by humans.
Ouray: The West Gold Hill Dinosaur trackway is special for a number of reasons, according to paleontologist Zane Goodell. “This trackway records the most successive steps by an individual dinosaur in the world (134). It’s also significant because the site only records one individual, which is unusual for sauropod trackways, and it completes a 180-degree turn, which is also very rare.”
The hike along the Silvershield Trail is difficult, with more than 1,000 feet of elevation gain. “It’s not a roadside attraction, so be prepared to carve out the majority of a day for it,” Goodell suggested. “The site also has just one sign at the beginning of the trail, and no other amenities.”
Ripple marks from moving water are preserved in the quartz-rich sandstone. When the area was uplifted and glaciers carved out the valley, this durable rock unit had been hydrothermally altered and cemented, enabling it to resist erosion. Glacial striations running parallel to the valley are also visible along the surface.
High country and high desert
Edwards: While Vail Valley is famous for its ski slopes, one longtime local is determined to let people know that this part of the Rocky Mountains was once flat and home to dinosaurs. The Museum at Dinosaur Junction opened in 2022 as a passion project that fossil hunter Billy Doran assembled inside the Edwards Early Learning Center. Displays include Eagle County fossil finds and other popular specimens.
Fruita: The Dinosaur Journey Museum’s tagline is “Where curiosity roars to life!” Here, life-size skeletons and robotics invite visitors to interact, and you can watch paleontologists working on fossils found nearby.
Back on I-70 near the Utah border, take Exit 2 for a scenic 1.5-mile hike along the Rabbit Valley Trail Through Time. This easy trail has interpretive signs pointing out Jurassic-age plant and animal fossils in situ. You may also spot paleontologists working in the Mygatt-Moore Quarry.
Dinosaur National Monument: Head across the Utah border to explore stops along the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway, which includes the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry and Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail as you journey through Vernal, Price and Moab. But it’s in Jensen, Utah, where you’ll see the most astonishing collection of dinosaur bones on the planet.
Park paleontologist ReBecca Hunt-Foster has overseen this unmatched site since 2018. During that time, new discoveries have cropped up on top of the already outstanding fossils first uncovered in the early 20th century. Just last fall, a large specimen was accidentally uncovered.
“We continue to find fossils right under our feet or, in this case, under our cars. Over 3,000 pounds of a Diplodocus dinosaur were recently excavated from the quarry parking lot, the first excavation in this area in 102 years,” Hunt-Foster said.
The star of the show is protected under glass. “The Quarry Exhibit Hall is a must-see. This historic dinosaur quarry preserves the remains of 1,500 individual bones from 10 different Late Jurassic dinosaurs.” This fossiliferous cliff face is mind boggling; you can touch some of the fossils. The Wall of Bones spans 150 feet in length and rises 45 feet.
In Wyoming
If you’re craving the chance to dig up and keep some fossils for yourself, head to Kemmerer, Wyo., where fossilized fish are preserved in slabs of stone you can chisel apart. There are a couple of private operations there to guide you, including Fossil Lake Safari. And while fish are not dinosaurs, nothing quite beats the feeling of cracking open rock and seeing an ancient plant or animal revealed for the first time in human history.
Kristen Kidd is the marketing and development director for Friends of Dinosaur Ridge. She led the effort to introduce the Stegosaurus license plate to raise awareness about and help protect Colorado’s tremendous fossil record.
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