By Scott Buehler, Moving UtahThe park itself
A sculpture park on the river, not a museum with a lawn
1544 Park Boulevard 8.5 acres Directions
The park calls itself an eight and a half acre sculpture park, and that word matters. What fills the ground is more than a hundred full size dinosaurs you walk among out in the open, not exhibits behind glass. On a fine day the draw is the outdoors, and the weather is part of the visit, so it reads more like a walk in a park than a trip to a museum.
It sits at 1544 Park Boulevard on the Ogden River, roughly four miles and about ten minutes by car northeast of downtown, with its own parking lot. The paved Ogden River trail runs right past it, so you can also reach it on foot or by bike, which puts a paid gate on the edge of a free trail. The trail itself, its trailheads and the parks strung along it are all covered on the river parkways page; this page starts at the gate. The park's phone is 801-393-3466, and the desk answers an hours question faster than any listing online.
One small thing confuses people: the park is not on Ogden City's list of its parks. That is not because the city has nothing to do with it. The city owns the ground; a foundation runs it, which is the next section, and the city only lists the parks its own parks department operates.
The details
Who owns it and who runs it
Ogden City owns it, a foundation runs it
Ogden City owns the land, and the Ogden Dinosaur Park and Museum Foundation has managed the place since July 2011. City property, nonprofit operator, under contract for well over a decade. That split is worth knowing because it explains almost every quirk you will meet here.
The clearest sign of it is the price. Admission is set by Ogden City ordinance, not by the operator, which means the gate only moves when the city council changes it in a public meeting. That is unusual, and it is why the price sits still for years and then jumps in a single step rather than drifting up a dollar at a time.
For a visitor the practical takeaway is knowing who to call. Hours, memberships and event questions go to the foundation on 801-393-3466. Anything about the gate price is a city question. The park uses its own names for the membership tiers and the city uses different names for the same tiers, so if the two sources ever seem to disagree, that is usually why.
The details
Hours and seasons
Four sets of hours, and one two week closure
Here is the whole reason wrong opening times float around online: the park runs four separate schedules through the year, and most listings copy just one of them. In spring, from March 15 to Memorial Day, it closes Mondays and runs Tuesday to Saturday 10 to 5 with Sunday noon to 5. In summer, Memorial Day to Labor Day, it opens seven days, Monday to Saturday 10 to 7 and Sunday noon to 5. Fall, from the day after Labor Day to November 1, goes back to the spring pattern with Mondays closed. Winter, November 1 to March 14, is the tightest: closed Sundays and Mondays, Tuesday to Saturday 10 to 4.
Two details save a wasted trip. Only summer opens on a Monday, so for three quarters of the year Monday is a closed day. And in every season the outdoor part of the park stays open an hour after the indoor museum closes, which means the last hour of a summer evening among the sculptures is the quiet one. Because the schedule turns over four times a year, the safe move is to glance at the park's own hours page for the exact week you are going.
The park closes completely from December 20 to January 4 for maintenance, and reopens January 5. That is right across the winter school break, when a lot of people would think to use it, and almost no listing prints it. On top of the two week closure the park is shut for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Day, with early closes on a handful of Dinos in the Dark and Dinos in the Snow event days. If a holiday visit is the plan, check the operator's hours page first.
The four blocks, as the park publishes them
What it costs
A flat twelve dollar gate, and when a membership wins
General admission is twelve dollars a head for everyone aged two and up, with toddlers under two free alongside a paying adult. There is no separate adult, senior or child rate, which is unusual for a place like this, and the twelve dollar price replaced a flat eight dollars that had held since the start of 2015. Groups of fifteen or more, booked a day ahead, drop to four dollars an adult, three dollars fifty a student and three dollars a child, with school field trips at three dollars a head, so the fifteen person line is worth knowing for anyone organizing a group.
Memberships come in three tiers the park names after geological periods, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous, each priced by household size and each cheaper than paying at the gate if you expect to come back three or four times in a year. The park posts the current rates. There is also a means tested Dinos for All family membership at fifty dollars, bought in person with a valid ID and a SNAP or EBT card.
The math is simple and it favors the pass. A family of four pays forty eight dollars at the gate, and the standard family membership is seventy five for the year, so a second visit already puts you ahead. For anyone living here who expects to come back even a couple of times a season, the flat gate is really the argument for the membership rather than the ticket.
The details
What is inside
Three museums, a paleontology lab, and a new playground
The sculptures are the reason to come, and the indoor half is what makes a wet or cold day work. Under the same ticket the park runs three small museums: the Stewart Museum of Paleontology, which includes a paleontology lab; the Ogden Natural History Museum; and the Gem and Mineral Museum. The lab is real and the park names it, but it does not publish set viewing hours, so whether there is work to watch on a given afternoon is a question for the front desk rather than something you can plan around.
The newest thing on the grounds is the Dinosaur Playground, which the park opened in 2025 and describes as an inclusive, all abilities space, with surfacing and equipment built so a child using a wheelchair or a walking frame can use the same structure as everyone else. It sits inside the gate, so it is part of the twelve dollar admission rather than a free neighborhood playground, which again points a regular visitor toward a membership. For free play equipment, Ogden's own parks are the place to look, and several are laid out on the parks, pools and courses page.
One quick untangling, because the names get crossed: this is not the Treehouse Museum. That is a separate downtown children's museum at 347 22nd Street (Directions), about three miles away, with its own hours and its own admission. The Dinosaur Park is out on the river at 1544 Park Boulevard. The Treehouse's full name is the Elizabeth Stewart Treehouse Museum, and the park holds a Stewart Museum of Paleontology, which is what tends to cross the two in people's heads, but they are entirely different places.
The details
How busy it gets
Six figures a year, and a very seasonal one
The park drew 105,308 visits in 2024, and the shape of that year tells you more than the total does. June is the peak at about 16,400, January the trough at a little over 900, roughly a seventeen to one swing inside one calendar year. That is a sharper seasonal curve than most Utah attractions carry, and it is exactly what you would expect of an outdoor place in a city with real winters.
One bump is worth reading: October runs busier than September, which reverses the usual autumn slide. That is the park's Dinos in the Dark Halloween run showing up in the count. It is a good, plain measure of how much a mid sized city leans on this place, and nothing more than that, so this page will not read anything into who visits or where they come from.
The details
If you live here
What the park is like as a place you keep coming back to
For a household in Ogden this is a membership decision rather than a ticket decision. The flat gate that costs a family of four forty eight dollars a visit is the same math that makes the seventy five dollar family pass pay off on the second trip, and the gold and platinum tiers exist for anyone who treats the place as a weekly stop. If money is tight, the means tested Dinos for All pass is there for fifty dollars.
The other thing a resident learns is the rhythm of the year. Spring and fall are the quiet windows, when the sculptures are pleasant to walk and the crowd is off its summer peak. Winter is short hours, five days a week, with a two week closure over the holidays, so it becomes an indoor museum trip more than an outdoor one. Knowing that ahead of time is the difference between a good afternoon and a locked gate.
If you are weighing a move to Ogden, small local knowledge like this is exactly what a good agent brings, and it is not the kind of thing a listing ever tells you. A Weber County partner agent I trust knows these streets and can walk you through the neighborhoods; I stay on the research and the financing side. Everything else the city runs, from the parks to the pools, is laid out on the parks, pools and courses page, and the wider picture is in the guide to moving to Ogden.