Imagine a terrifyingly strange world where the only sounds are those made by nature, with creatures so huge their movements make the ground shake, and where in place of the Rocky Mountains, a flat, tropical plain meets an inland ocean.

This is the Colorado of 150 million years ago, the age of the dinosaur, the Jurassic Period made familiar to all by Michael Crichton. Hollywood is at it again with the recent release of Disney Studio’s Dinosaur, a feature-length film that brings the prehistoric age to life through animation. Extinct for millions of years, the dinosaur has never been more popular.

As wonderful as today’s technology is at recreating the ancient past, it still can’t beat the real thing. And that’s what we have in Colorado, practically in CSM’s backyard.

A treasure-trove of fossilized dinosaur bones and footprints located along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains near Morrison, Colo., brings thousands of students, scientists and tourists to the area each year to see the prehistoric evidence for themselves.

Dinosaur Ridge, as the area was named in the 1980s, was discovered by CSM geology professor Arthur Lakes in 1877 during a Sunday afternoon hike.

Lake’s fantastic discovery yielded the world’s first-discovered stegosaurus and apatosaurus (also called brontosaurus) from the Jurassic Period. At 33 tons, the apatosaurus was the first mega-dinosaur ever uncovered, exciting paleontologists, geologists and archaeologists the world over.

In 1930, when the Alameda Parkway was extended over the Dakota Hogback, the site also yielded hundreds of dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous Period (100 million years ago). Where the Dakota Hogback now sits was once the edge of an inland sea.

Dinosaurs lived and died along its shores and left evidence of their existence in fossilized footprints embedded in rocks.  It is believed that the dinosaurs left their footprints in the sand along the beach not long before a nearby now-extinct river flooded, covering the impressions with silt. In addition to footprints, there is evidence of roots from an ancient mangrove-like swamp.

For many years after its discovery, the geologically world-famous site remained unnamed, unmarked, yet easily accessible to all who were interested.

For many, the temptation to collect fossils was too great and some even went so far as to chip whole footprints from the rocks. In the mid-1980s, a group of interested parties, including Bob Weimer, CSM professor emeritus and Virginia Mast, CSM geology museum curator, founded Friends of Dinosaur Ridge, whose mission is to preserve and protect the area that is now designated a National Natural Landmark.

Ed Warren Geol E ’50, Hon Mem ’85 and Andy Taylor PhD ’74 joined the volunteer group a few years later. Warren is currently president of Friends. Taylor is on the board of directors.

 “It’s a labor of love,” says Warren about his and the other volunteers’ activities with the Friends.

Since its 1989 start-up, the group’s assets have grown to just under $1 million with one full-time paid director and 130 active volunteers. “Upwards of 100,000 people visit each year,” says Warren, predicting 200,000 to 300,000 visitors per year in the near future. “Last year we had 4,000 school children in May alone.”

The most easily accessible parts of Dinosaur Ridge are located along the Alameda Parkway that loops around the Dakota Hogback and are well marked with 17 interpretive signs.

The more adventuresome can hike a two-mile trail over the Dakota Hogback. About six times a year, the Alameda Parkway access is closed to traffic and guides are stationed along the road to give visitors further insights.

A recently purchased bus—brightly painted with scenes from the Cretaceous Period—takes visitors to the site from the visitors center located at the northeast end of the ridge. Future plans include closing the road to traffic permanently, says Warren. The ridge would then be accessible only by bicycle, foot or bus.

The most remarkable sight along the Alameda Parkway is found at Stop 4 on the east side of the ridge. “About one hundred million years ago, the Rocky Mountains rose,  pushing the plains up to a 45-degree incline,” Warren explains. Highway construction then exposed the face of those slanted rocks. What the visitor sees at Stop 4 are tracks from Cretaceous dinosaurs, probably ornithopods, an ostrich-like carnivore and theropods, an herbivore. Two sets of theropod footprints—one large, one small—run side by side, possibly that of mother and offspring.

The footprints, which are eroding, have been darkened so that they can be more easily discerned. Solar panels illuminate the site at night. Three hundred and six footprints have been mapped and measured so far.

In addition to erosion, Warren says, “Vandalism is our biggest problem.” Fences have been erected around the footprints although researchers, including some college students, are allowed to study the area up close. Money raised by Friends of Dinosaur Ridge has gone toward erecting numerous signs, building a podium for use by guides and establishing and expanding the visitors center.

A former residence purchased by Jefferson County, on property that abuts the ridge, serves as the visitors center and includes office space and a gift shop with dinosaur-related merchandise including plaster casts of footprints.

Future plans include building a new center, somewhat in the shape of a stegosaurus, with spines atop the roof and a head protruding from the front of the building. The stegosaurus is an appropriate symbol because not only was it first discovered at Dinosaur Ridge, it has since been named Colorado’s state fossil. The new center, when built, will be noticeable from the C470 highway.

Dinosaur Ridge has special programs throughout the year including Elderhostel lectures (led by Warren) and summer science day camps for children 11-13 co-sponsored by CSM. In the spring, bus loads of school children also visit to watch eagles, hawks and falcons migrating north overhead because the ridge sits beneath a raptor migration corridor.

Preserving Dinosaur Ridge is important for many reasons, says Warren. The site not only gives visitors a unique and remarkable glimpse of the past, it is both free and easily accessible. The thousands who visit can walk right up to the rocks and feel the smoothness of embedded, fossilized dinosaur bones from the Jurassic Period and marvel at how small their hands appear resting inside gigantic footprints from the Cretaceous Period.

“Our focus is in keeping this world-famous area from being destroyed,” Warren says. “We’ll all be gone in time, but we want it to be here for future generations.” 

Maureen Keller
Mines Magazine
Spring 2000
Vol. 90 No. 2