The drive from Steamboat Springs to Dinosaur, CO, was quite pretty. We saw many herds of mule deer grazing & wandering about in the adjoining fields &, once, crossing the highway right in front of us.
When we got to the Visitors Center that marks the road leading up to Dinosaur National Monument, we received the dissappointing news that the building that houses/protects the wall of fossils had been closed indefinitely since July 12th. The building was constructed 50 years ago, with one wall being the actual stone quarry area that had been first excavated. It has been protected from change, so visitors could see a huge number of fossils sticking out of the wall. Unfortunately, the entire site sits on top of a type of soil that can absorb 5 times its weight in water, then dry back to its original state. It’s useful for certain applications, but terrible as a stable foundation for a large building. Over the years the upper walkway has sagged deeply in the center & the floor is so distorted that the rangers jokingly call it the roller coaster room. Last month, specialists declared that the building is in danger of collapsing, so much so that they were forced to close immediately.
The lack of funding to fix it is only part of the problem. The building is on the National Register of Historical Landmarks, which means that they cannot change the basic structure or the exterior appearance of the building. So any repairs or alterations are severely limited. It’s a real shame that such an amazing collection of paleontolic history is on the verge of destruction.
We were able to take a tour, by tram, that took us up to the building, where we could kind of see the wall through the windows. Our tour guide, Michelle Arsenault, formally of Leominster, MA (where we lived for 4 years & Shaun was born!), was able to tell us a lot about the geologic characteristics of the area. A long time ago, when the continental plates in the Pacific scraped up against each other, the North American plate buckled up from the pressure. That is how the Rocky Mountains were born (it’s also what happened on the other side of our continent, creating the Appalachians). In this area around Utah & Montana, when the layers of earth buckled up, they ended up tilting up at a 70 degree angle, so as you tour through the area you can see rock layers starting from the Cambrian Period, basically stuff from the center of the Earth, to the Periods called Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian, Triassic (starting to sound more familiar?), Jurassic, & Cretaceous. Within these periods are Formations, each having a different color, mineral content & critter remains. In some of the times you can find remnants of ancient sea life, back during one of the 12 times in Earth’s geologic history that this area was a sea. Some of the others harbor reptiles, petrified sand dunes or forests. Others are mined for coal, gypsum, uranium, geodes lined with calcite or quartz crystals, or phosphate (processed for commercial fertilizer) or drilled for petroleum.
We also saw areas with petroglyphs (pictures carved into stone, as opposed to pictographs, which are painted onto the surface) left behind in caves by the people who lived there thousands of years ago.
As we finished our tour, we were able to see a gorge carved by the Green River through a mountain. It was amazing to see the sheared cliff walls bordering a relatively small river. The power of time & persistance!
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