By Scott Buehler, Moving UtahThe Quarry Exhibit Hall
Up the hill from the visitor center · Park entrance fee · Year round · Directions
A ridge of Morrison Formation sandstone here caught a Jurassic river's worth of dinosaur carcasses and held them. Quarrying began in 1909 and ran for decades, and the skeletons that came out of it now stand in museums on three continents. Then the decision that made this place unique: stop excavating, leave roughly 1,500 bones exposed in the rock face where they lie, and put a building over the cliff.
The result is a two story room whose back wall is the quarry itself, tilted at a steep angle, with femurs, vertebrae, ribs and skulls half emerged from the stone. An upper walkway puts you level with the top of it and a lower one gets you close enough that a marked section is open to touch. Rangers work the floor and will point out what you are looking at, which is worth taking them up on because an unlabelled bone in rock is genuinely hard to read.
Getting up the hill changes with the season
In the summer months you park at the Quarry Visitor Center and take the free shuttle up, because the upper parking lot is small. Outside the summer you drive yourself. In deep winter rangers have led car caravans instead. And in any season at all, personal vehicle access is available for visitors with accessibility needs. Say so at the desk. Nobody will offer it if you do not ask. The shuttle window and its hours shift from year to year, so check the monument's current page before you plan the timing of the day.
The hall you walk into is the replacement building
The original opened in 1958 under the National Park Service's Mission 66 program, designed by Anshen and Allen with Richard Hein as project architect, and it is still admired as mid century architecture. It also sat on bentonite clay, which swells and shrinks with water, and it began moving almost immediately. The Park Service closed it in July 2006 as structurally unfit for visitors and the replacement opened in October 2011, drawing visitors back in numbers the old building never saw.
The details
Getting there
US-40 east about 13 miles to Jensen, then north on UT-149 about 7 miles. Park at the Quarry Visitor Center. In summer the last stretch is on the free shuttle.
Before you go
- Check whether you are in the shuttle season before you plan the timing of the day.
- Ask about accessible vehicle access at the desk. It is available in every season.
- Hours shorten in winter. Check the posted hours for your visit date.
- The touchable section is marked. Everything outside it is not, and that matters.
- Rangers on the floor will read the wall for you. It is the best free thing here.
The Fossil Discovery Trail
Between the visitor center and the hall · Free with entry · Spring and autumn · Directions
The National Park Service puts the Fossil Discovery Trail at 1.2 miles one way, running between the Quarry Visitor Center and the exhibit hall, and it is the only place in the monument where you can look at fossils that nobody has excavated, prepared or arranged.
It crosses three rock formations on the way. In the Morrison you can find dinosaur bone fragments and a few larger pieces sitting in the outcrop exactly as they weathered out, which is precisely the condition the 1909 discovery was in. In the Stump the fossils are marine, mostly clam shells, because this ground was under a shallow sea long before it was a river floodplain. Nothing is behind glass and nothing has a label with a species name on it.
It is the honest counterpart to the exhibit hall
The wall of bones is spectacular and it is also curated: somebody chose what to leave, cleaned it and lit it. This trail is the opposite experience and it improves the other one. Walking a hillside and picking out a bone fragment yourself, unlabelled, in a rock layer somebody has told you the name of, is what the people in 1909 were doing. Do the trail first if the weather allows and the exhibit hall makes a great deal more sense.
Look hard, and take nothing at all
Everything on this trail is a federally protected fossil on federal land, and collecting any of it is a crime rather than a souvenir. The reason it can be left in the open is that people leave it alone. Photograph it, sit with it, put it back exactly where it was if you have picked it up before you thought about it, and let the next family have the same moment of finding something themselves.
The details
Getting there
Start at either end. Most people walk down from the exhibit hall to the visitor center when the shuttle is running, which turns the 1.2 miles into a one way descent.
Before you go
- No shade and no water on the trail. Carry your own and start early in summer.
- Every fossil here is protected. Collecting any of it is an offense, not a keepsake.
- Walking down from the hall to the visitor center is easier than walking up.
- The fossils are unlabelled. Ask at the desk what to look for before you set off.
- Flash flood risk exists in the drainages here in monsoon season.
Swelter Shelter and the Cub Creek lizards
Cub Creek Road · Free with entry · Year round · Directions
Cub Creek Road runs east from the visitor center and it is the monument's best hour of driving. About a mile along it, a pullout gives a 200 foot walk to Swelter Shelter, an alcove carrying both petroglyphs and pictographs. Further on, above the road, the Cub Creek panels carry a set of large lizard figures that are unusual enough that they are what this stretch of the monument is known for among people who look at rock art.
The work is Fremont, carved and painted somewhere in the region of a thousand to two thousand years ago by people who farmed and hunted this valley. That is a description of an archaeological culture rather than a full account of anybody, and the panels connect to living nations today. The Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation governs the country immediately west of here from Fort Duchesne, and its members have their own relationship to this ground.
The road is paved for eight miles and then it is not
Cub Creek Road is paved for its first eight miles, with the last two unpaved to the cabin. In dry conditions an ordinary car handles all of it without difficulty. In wet conditions the last two miles are a different question, and the monument's own current conditions page is the thing to read rather than a mapping app. Ask at the visitor center; they know what happened yesterday.
Look for a long time and touch nothing whatsoever
The rule is the same at every panel in this country and the reason is specific: skin oils degrade both the rock surface and the desert varnish the carvings are cut through, and the damage is permanent. Chalk, water and rubbings are out for the same reason. Stay on the marked approach, use a long lens if you have one, and take the interpretive signage as the only interpretation worth trusting.
The details
Getting there
East from the Quarry Visitor Center on Cub Creek Road. Swelter Shelter is about a mile along with a signed pullout and a short walk. The lizard panels sit further east, signed, above the road.
Before you go
- Do not touch any panel. Skin oil damages the surface permanently.
- The last two miles of Cub Creek Road are unpaved. Check conditions if it has rained.
- There is no water, fuel or shop anywhere along the road.
- The pullouts are small. Park in them properly rather than half on the road.
- Take the on site signage as the interpretation. Ignore what the internet tells you a figure means.
Josie Morris's homestead at the end of the road
End of Cub Creek Road · Free with entry · Spring to autumn · Directions
Ten miles east of the visitor center, Cub Creek Road stops at a cabin under a cliff, and the story attached to it is the best human history in the monument. Josie Bassett Morris settled here about 1914, built the cabin that still stands in the mid 1930s, and lived on this spot for more than fifty years, running cattle, keeping a garden and an orchard, and getting through the winters largely alone.
She was accused of cattle rustling twice and convicted neither time. She was a known associate of the outlaws who worked this country in the 1890s. She was still living here at 89, when she fell on ice that winter, broke her hip and died the following spring at 90, after which the homestead came into the monument. The cabin is preserved rather than reconstructed, and you can walk into it.
The two canyons behind the cabin are the working part
Josie penned livestock in Box Canyon and Hog Canyon by fencing their mouths and letting the walls do the rest, which is an entirely sensible piece of ranching and also the most direct explanation of how somebody farms alone at the end of a dirt road. The National Park Service puts Box Canyon at half a mile round trip and Hog Canyon at 1.5 miles round trip, both easy, both from the cabin. Walk them and the homestead stops being scenery.
What the record actually shows
There is a version of Josie that gets told as frontier romance and it does her no favours. The documented facts are more interesting: a woman who homesteaded, ran a working operation, went to court twice over cattle and walked out both times, and stayed put for half a century in a place that gave her almost nothing for free. Read the Park Service's own account at the site rather than the ones that need her to be an outlaw.
The details
Getting there
Follow Cub Creek Road to its end, ten miles east of the visitor center. The last two miles are unpaved. The cabin, the parking lot and both canyon trailheads are together at the end.
Before you go
- Box Canyon is half a mile round trip and Hog Canyon is 1.5 miles. Both are easy.
- Check conditions on the unpaved final stretch after rain before committing.
- The cabin is preserved in place. Look, and handle nothing inside it.
- There is no water at the site. It is the far end of a road with no services.
- Deer and rattlesnakes both use the canyons. Watch where you put your feet in warm weather.
Split Mountain, the river and the two nature trails
Off the Quarry area road · Free with entry · Spring and autumn · Directions
The Green River cuts straight through the middle of a mountain here rather than going round it, which is the single most arresting piece of geology in the monument and the reason the feature is called Split Mountain. The river was there first and kept cutting as the rock rose under it. You can stand at the boat ramp and look at the result.
Two nature trails work off this area. Desert Voices leaves the Split Mountain boat ramp and runs 1.5 miles round trip through the rock layers that build the mountain, with a quarter mile connector to the longer route. Sound of Silence, from a trailhead two miles east of the visitor center, is 3.2 miles round trip with about 400 feet of elevation change and the Park Service rates it moderate to difficult, with genuine route finding across open rock.
Two campgrounds sit on the river here
Green River Campground has 80 sites, opens April to October, takes reservations and charges a nightly fee, with a lower rate for senior and access pass holders. At this writing that was 18 dollars a night and 9 with a pass, and campground rates change, so confirm the current amount with the monument. Split Mountain sits about half a mile upstream, stays open year round, takes reservations from April to October, and carries four group sites each holding up to 25 people and 6 vehicles. A river trail links the two.
Sound of Silence is a route, not a path
The name is doing more work than it looks. The Park Service's own rating is moderate to difficult and the reason is that much of the line is over open rock with cairns rather than tread, through country that looks the same in several directions. Photograph the trailhead map, keep the next cairn in sight, and turn round rather than improvise. In poor light or building weather this is not the trail to be learning route finding on.
The details
Getting there
Signed off the road past the Quarry Visitor Center. Desert Voices starts at the Split Mountain boat ramp; the Sound of Silence trailhead is two miles east of the visitor center.
Before you go
- Desert Voices is 1.5 miles round trip. Sound of Silence is 3.2 and rated harder.
- Cairns mark much of Sound of Silence. Photograph the trailhead map first.
- Green River Campground is April to October and reservable. Split Mountain runs year round.
- Carry water. There is no drinking water on either walk.
- Afternoon storms build fast in late summer and open rock is the wrong place to be.
McKee Spring, at the end of a dirt road
Island Park Road · Free with entry · Dry weather only · Directions
The best rock art in the monument is not on the paved road. McKee Spring sits about 22 miles from the visitor center, the last 10.5 of them along the unpaved Island Park Road, and the panels there are larger, sharper and more vivid than anything on Cub Creek. The figures are the broad shouldered Fremont style the Vernal area is the type region for, cut into a varnished cliff face and visible from a short walk off the road.
The reason most visitors never see them is the road, and it is a legitimate reason. The Island Park Road to the spring is unpaved for its last 10.5 miles and normally passable for a careful ordinary car in dry conditions, with a standing warning that it can become impassable when wet. That is not a formality. Dry clay out here turns to grease within minutes of a storm and an ordinary car on it becomes a recovery problem a long way from a phone signal.
Go in settled weather and check first, every time
The rule for this drive is simple and it has no exceptions worth making. Ring or ask the visitor center for the current condition of Island Park Road on the day you intend to drive it, look at the sky for the afternoon rather than the morning, and turn back the moment the surface starts to feel greasy. A dry forecast in Vernal is not the same as a dry road twenty miles out.
The size of the figures is the whole point
Fremont anthropomorphs at McKee Spring run large, sometimes near life size, with headdresses, necklaces and the trapezoidal shoulders that give the style its name. Seeing them at that scale after the smaller Cub Creek work changes your sense of what these panels were for. Stand well back, photograph from where you stand, and touch nothing at all. There is no ranger out here and the site's condition is entirely down to who visited it last.
The details
Getting there
From the Quarry area, follow signs for Island Park. The last 10.5 miles are unpaved. The panels are a short walk from a pullout near the spring.
Before you go
- Check the road condition with the visitor center on the day. Wet means do not go.
- There is no signal, no water and no service anywhere on the Island Park Road.
- Carry a spare and know how to change it before you leave the pavement.
- Touch nothing. There is no fence and no supervision at this site.
- Do not attempt the Echo Park Road with an ordinary car. It is a different class of road.
The honest road warning
Where the pavement stops, and what happens after it
This monument has four grades of road inside it and a mapping app treats all four as lines of the same color. Getting that wrong out here is expensive in a way that getting it wrong near town is not.
Paved and fine for anything: UT-149 from Jensen, the road to and around the Quarry Visitor Center, and the first eight miles of Cub Creek Road. That covers the exhibit hall, the Fossil Discovery Trail, Swelter Shelter, Split Mountain and both nature trails, and every one of those is a stop an ordinary car reaches on pavement.
Unpaved but normally fine for a careful ordinary car in dry conditions: the last two miles of Cub Creek Road out to Josie's cabin, and the Island Park Road to McKee Spring. Both carry the same caveat, which is that the surface is clay and clay becomes grease within minutes of rain. The monument's standing note on Island Park Road is that it can become impassable when wet, and that is a statement of fact rather than a disclaimer.
High clearance four wheel drive country: Echo Park Road, which the monument recommends against for large recreational vehicles and trailers entirely. Beyond it sits the backcountry proper, including the Yampa Bench Road, where flood damage can close a route for a season. If a road on this list is not one you have specifically checked on the day, treat it as closed rather than open.
The monument publishes a current conditions page, and it is the only source worth using. Road status here changes with a single storm and the published page is updated against what staff actually drove. Check it again before you drive out, and ask at the visitor center desk, which knows about yesterday.
When to come
The quarry is open all year, and almost nobody knows it
Spring and autumn are the comfortable months and everybody knows it, which is why April, May, September and October fill the parking lots and the shuttle. The walking is at its best, the light on the rock art is at its best, and the dirt roads are usually in their most reliable condition of the year.
High summer is hot, exposed and thunderstormy at around 4,700 feet on the monument floor, which is lower than Vernal. The exhibit hall itself is indoors and comfortable, so a July visit works perfectly well if you build it around the building and the early morning, and treat the trails as a dawn activity. The monsoon brings flash flooding to the drainages, which is a hazard on the Fossil Discovery Trail and a serious one in the backcountry.
Winter is the part almost nobody uses. The visitor center and the exhibit hall stay open every day except three federal holidays, the crowds vanish entirely, and instead of a shuttle the drive up has been a ranger led car caravan. Split Mountain Campground stays open year round. The catch is the drive and the daylight rather than the monument itself, and a clear cold day out here is one of the better things this corner of Utah offers.