DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT — The same clay soil that yields the one of the world’s premier caches of dinosaur bones can be disastrous for surface structures — as paleontologists and visitors here discovered.
But now, five years after a precautionary closure, a new visitor center and re-engineered quarry exhibit have opened, funded by an $8.1 million dose of federal stimulus funds.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday formally opened the new 7,595-square foot visitor structure – designed to withstand the heaving and shrinking of expansive soils that ill-fated homeowners around Colorado know too well.
Salazar then donned a hard hat and hiked to the Quarry Exhibit Hall that opens to the public Oct. 4 with an estimated 1,500 dinosaur bones from the late Jurassic Period around 148 million years ago.
“This visitor center and Dinosaur National Monument will once again become the huge economic generator for this part of the state,” Salazar said this morning at a formal ribbon cutting attended by tribal chiefs, war veterans and residents of the Vernal, Utah area.
The re-opening marks a milestone in efforts to refurbish decaying national park and national monument structures nationwide. It also revives local hopes here because the buildings are a major magnet for tourists savoring a northwestern Colorado region that recently has become a target for oil and gas industry drilling.
Paleontologist Earl Douglas, working for the Carnegie Museum, first unearthed dinosaur bones in the bentonite clay soils here in 1909. For scientists, the fossils — skulls and femurs and vertebrae the size of ship’s anchors — are an irreplaceable motherlode because they come from nearly 15 different types of prehistoric sauropods. Among them: camarasaurus, stegosaurus and allosaurus. All are left in place in the quarry exhibit. A new mural depicts them in the flesh as modern dinosaur experts have envisioned them using computer-aided design.
It wasn’t until 1958 that a visitor center opened at the monument. Back then, the clay soil containing bentonite seemed solid enough. But over the next 40 years it heaved and buckled. Ceiling tiles began falling. Concrete floors and window glass cracked. The chief paleontologist’s office floor began to tilt so much that a chair on wheels would roll, carrying him away from his desk.
During the 4th of July weekend in 2006, engineers warned it was only a matter of time before visitors or staffers were hurt. The superintendent closed it down.
As many as 400,000 people would visit in good years. Last year, about 200,000 visited the monument, driving the roads, hiking on trails and rafting wild waters inside the 210,000-acre park preserve that surrounds the bone-digging area.
Salazar faced a few local protestors during the visit, a group that showed up at the ribbon cutting wearing “I Love Drilling” T-shirts.
Salazar said being asked to select oil and gas development over land conservation is a “false choice,” referring to administration work to balance energy development with conservation.
After touring the quarry, Salazar said he would have “put a different shirt on, that would say: ‘Drill in the right places, with the right protections’.”
The visitor center completed, in about 18 months of work, features exhibits explaining the monument, an auditorium, information desk and a bookstore. It’s located a half mile from the quarry where the fossils can be studied up close.
Admission to the monument still costs $10 per car – the same as before, said Dan Johnson, the National Park Service chief of interpretation at the monument.
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
