Colorado’s Quiet Monument to the Dinosaur

One way to get a look at “Dinosaur Country” is to join the hang gliders at their annual championships in Dinosaur, Colo. Simply affix your wings, hop off Cliff Ridge and ride the thermals for 100 miles in any direction. Not a mall or suburb to be seen.

A hang glider’s view would include Dinosaur National Monument--deep gorges carved by the Green and Yampa rivers and backed by towering sandstone cliffs tinted a rainbow of colors.

Those who prefer hiking can enjoy many of the same views from the monument’s aerie heights. The national monument offers scenery every bit as spectacular as the more popular national parks, but with more opportunity for silence and solitude.

The first dinosaur bones were found at the turn of the century. Paleontologists--and a lot of tourists--carted off bones until 1916 when an 80-acre Dinosaur National Monument was established. In 1938, by presidential proclamation, Franklin D. Roosevelt added some 210,000 acres to the monument, protecting the Green River and Yampa River canyons.

First stop for most monument visitors is the Dinosaur Quarry Visitors Center, located seven miles north of Jensen, Utah. From the quarry has come the world’s largest collection of fossilized dinosaur bones. On display are many complete skeletons, as well as exhibits explaining dinosaur natural history and the science of paleontology.

Dinosaur National Monument, which sprawls across 325 square miles of Utah and Colorado, is an object of rivalry between the two states. Utah has the quarry site, as well as the only town of any size (Vernal, complete with dinosaur gift shops) and the national monument’s campground. Colorado boasts the tiny town of Dinosaur, the national monument visitors center and headquarters, and Blue Mountain Village, a new private campground.

The best--and certainly the most accessible--hiking is on the Colorado side of the monument. Three trail heads can be reached via Harpers Corner Scenic Drive, a 31-mile paved road that leads from monument headquarters north into the heart of canyon country.

Besides the terrific scenery, the hiker will enjoy an increasingly rare natural resource: silence. So deep and profound is the quiet here that it’s studied by the National Park Service and its Ambient Sound Monitoring Program as a baseline for comparison with other parks and a standard for the future tranquillity of the monument itself.

Begin your on-foot exploration of the monument four miles up Harpers Corner Scenic Drive with the half-mile Plug Hat Nature Trail. Exhibits interpret local plant life and history. A trail highlight is a view of the Uinta Basin and a rainbow of rock known as the Morrison Formation. Iron and other trace elements color the rock formation, the final resting place for many a dinosaur.

Ruple Point Trail begins at Island Park Overlook, 28 miles north of monument headquarters. The eight-mile round-trip path crosses a plateau and is thus fairly level. Island Park, far beneath the beginning of the trail, is an archipelago scattered along a mellow section of the Green River.

After crossing a hot, dry open plateau (an early morning start is best), the trail dead-ends with a commanding view of Split Mountain Canyon and a section of Green River that thrills rafters. Enjoy the view of the Moonshine and SOB rapids, then hike back the way you came.

At the end of Harpers Corner Scenic Drive is Harpers Corner Trail, which follows a promontory to a dramatic viewpoint. A park service interpretive pamphlet identifies stops along the two-mile trail. Even without the natural history lesson, this footpath is a winner, particularly for the views of the Yampa and Green River gorges more than half a vertical mile below the trail.

Harpers Corner takes the name of a local rancher who used the narrow promontory, bordered on three sides by precipitous cliffs, as a natural corral. A short length of fence was all Mr. Harper needed to confine his livestock.

Conservationists often rejoice at what they don’t see from Harpers Corner Trail: a dam. Echo Park Dam, proposed in the early 1950s, would have inundated the river canyons. After a titanic battle between the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the National Park Service (with the aid of the Sierra Club and other organizations), the dam proposal was defeated.

Your trail’s-end view of the Green River might tempt you to join a guided river-rafting trip. (Ask about these trips at the monument visitors center.) Or, for a closer look at the river and its dramatic Whirlpool Canyon, hike the four-mile-long Jones Hole Trail, which leads from a fish hatchery down to the Green River.

While the Harpers Corner and Jones Hole trails are but a few miles apart as the crow flies, you can’t get there from here; that is to say, it’s a 100-mile drive from the Harpers Corner trail head to the Jones Hole trail head.

Colorado’s ‘Dinosaur Country’, Ruple Point, Harpers Corner Trails Where: Dinosaur National Monument Distance: 1/2 to 8 miles round trip. Terrain: High desert basins and plateaus. Highlights: Dinosaur bone quarry; grand view of Green and Yampa river gorges. Degree of difficulty: Easy to moderate. Precautions: Carry water, prepare for desert hiking. For more information: Contact Dinosaur National Monument, P.O. Box 210, Dinosaur, Colo. 81610, (303) 374-2216.