Dinosaur National Monument straddles the Colorado-Utah line in Colorado’s far northwest corner, protecting more than 210,000 acres of deep river canyons where the Green and Yampa rivers meet. The famous dinosaur bones are on the Utah side, but the Colorado side is where you’ll find the monument’s wildest scenery, from the overlooks of Harpers Corner to Steamboat Rock towering over Echo Park.

The monument began with a single bone quarry. In 1909 paleontologist Earl Douglass discovered a rich bed of dinosaur fossils near present-day Jensen, Utah, and President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Dinosaur National Monument in 1915 to protect it. In 1938 the monument was greatly expanded to include the canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers in Colorado, the same canyons explorer John Wesley Powell floated in 1869, when he named the Gates of Lodore. In the 1950s a proposed dam at Echo Park would have flooded these canyons, and the national fight to stop it, settled in 1956, became a turning point for the American conservation movement. Petroglyphs and pictographs left by the Fremont people still mark the canyon walls.

On the Colorado side, start at the Canyon Visitor Center near the town of Dinosaur, then drive the paved Harpers Corner Road about 31 miles north across high sagebrush plateaus. Stops like Plug Hat Butte and Canyon Overlook break up the drive, and at the road’s end, where the short Harpers Corner Trail follows a narrow ridge through piñon and juniper to dizzying views of the Green and Yampa rivers, Whirlpool Canyon and the Mitten Park Fault. Look closely at the rock at the end of the trail and you may spot fossils of tiny sea creatures far older than the dinosaurs. When the road is passable, a steep dirt road drops to Echo Park, where Steamboat Rock rises beside the Green River just below the Yampa confluence, and its walls throw back echoes. In the north, the Gates of Lodore mark where the Green River enters Lodore Canyon, the start of a classic multi-day rafting trip. The monument is also a certified dark-sky park, with superb stargazing.

The National Park Service lists Oct. 27 (Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday) and Nov. 11 (Veterans Day) as entrance fee-free days for U.S. citizens and residents. The Canyon Visitor Center in Colorado is closed for the season until May 15, 2027, and Echo Park Road is temporarily closed to vehicles because of storm damage, while Harpers Corner Road remains open and typically closes for winter from Dec. 31 to Apr. 15. Check the current conditions page before you go.