MOFFAT COUNTY —Intrepid explorer John Wesley Powell technically may have put Dinosaur National Monument on the map in 1869, but it wasn’t until a July 14, 1938, proclamation by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the park’s intrinsic value was fully recognized. Fans of the 210,000-acre monument to wild grandeur and American heritage celebrate the 75th anniversary Sunday of the U.S. government getting it right.
The original Dinosaur National Monument of 1915 — all 80 acres of it preserved by President Woodrow Wilson — was deserving in its own right. There, at the site of the current visitors center just across the Utah line,
But much like those prehistoric bones entombed in dirt and rock, the ancient canyons carved out by the Green and Yampa rivers remained waiting to be discovered by all but Powell’s exploration party and a handful of others. Among them, a daring expedition by a team of , 10 years before the monument was recognized.
“It’s amazing. Driving across Highway 40 you have no idea it’s even here,” said park superintendent Mary Risser. “You have no idea these canyons are around.”
Even now, only about 300,000 visitors a year witness firsthand the canyons and fossils of Dinosaur, and fewer than 15,000 actually surrounding the Canyon of Lodore, Echo Park, Whirlpool Canyon and Split Mountain Canyon. And while that first number could be higher, consensus holds that the second one is about right.
“Dinosaur National Monument has a very unique management plan that’s right where it should be. It makes for a very high-quality experience,” said Tom Kleinschnitz, the owner of , which celebrates its 50th anniversary of guiding through the monument this year. “The things we’ve done to preserve Dinosaur National Monument — putting the management plan in place here that recognizes this as a very special place that gets used very sparingly and is taken care of — those are decisions that were made in the late ’60s and early ’70s and they carry through to today. I think those kinds of plans and that forward thinking will provide quality experiences for generations to come.”
The remote park in the arid northwest corner of Colorado has seen its management put to the test through the years, including now-famous attempts to dam the rivers that have spurred the state’s commercial rafting industry and gave rise to modern environmentalism with the dams’ defeats.
Even now, as an elder statesman within the National Park Service, Dinosaur remains equal parts lightning rod and beacon of conservation.
“I think that’s probably all due to the economy and potential for mineral development in this area,” said Risser, the superintendent for more than eight years now. “But I think it’s changing. When you talk to the folks (in the region), I think there’s a greater appreciation for the role that tourism can play. I didn’t get that when I first moved here.”
National parks and monuments are not allowed to advertise themselves and Dinosaur lacks the well-trodden tourist path of places such as Zion, Bryce Canyon and Grand Canyon National Park. Further, the defeat of two congressional bills seeking national park status in 1956 and 1957 was credited to political fallout from the failed water storage project.
Compounding the monument’s modern identity crisis was the created by shifting earth beneath its foundation. A federal work stimulus package helped expedite the new visitors center that expanded its mission to educate about more than just bones.
“When we had the chance to do our , they talk about the resources you can find if you go and look for them,” Risser said. “It talks about the rivers, it talks about homesteading, the geology, the natural resources, the birds, wildlife, flowers, ecological zones and things like that. So the whole idea is to get people to not just think about the dinosaur bones but to go out and find out about all the other things in Dinosaur.”
Dinosaur has embarked on its first in-depth visitors survey to learn more about how the park is being used. It made a small political splash last week when through the 21-mile Gates of Lodore section of the Green River to its confluence with the Yampa.
The trip was reminiscent of awareness strategies employed by David Brower and the Sierra Club when they escorted film crews, reporters and even members of the Kennedy family down the rivers to increase awareness of threats to Dinosaur.
“If nothing else, it just lets them know what’s here,” Risser said. “The first probably six years I was here, we did a familiarization trip and got staffers from the various congressional delegations to go with us. It’s just an opportunity to kind of show them what’s here and what the issues are and just give them a better understanding that it’s not just those dinosaur bones, that there’s a lot more here through Dinosaur.”
Judging from reaction, the strategy works.
“None of the people we left back in Washington know what they’re missing,” Bennet said at the halfway point of his first visit to the monument. “Truthfully, I don’t think I did either.”
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993, swilloughby@denverpost.com or twitter.com/willoughbydp
