Indigenous people, Spaniard explorers, fur trappers, traders, settlers, and explorers have each left a mark upon the landscape encompassed within the boundary lines of Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and Colorado.

Pool Creek petroglyphs, Dinosaur National Monument / NPS - Jake McFee

Long before this national monument was ever a thought in the public’s collective consciousness, Indigenous natives such as the Fremont people roamed within and lived upon the desert landscape near the Green and Yampa rivers, which provided water and food for continued existence in the area. The nearby alcoves – many of which were graced with petroglyphs (etchings) and pictographs (drawings) created by these people – provided protection from the hot sun and elements.

In the 1700s, Spaniards entered the picture, blazing trails for trappers and traders, some of whom became the first to float the Green River (up to the aptly-named Disaster Falls). In the 1800s and early 1900s, settlers arrived to build homesteads. For some of them, the land and weather were too harsh and they ultimately departed, leaving abandoned homesteads reminding today’s visitors of failed dreams. Other settlers, however, succeeded and thrived, their descendants continuing to call the area home.

Irishman Pat Lynch, who served in both the U.S. Navy (under his own name) and later the U.S. Army (under an assumed name), is believed to have arrived in the Dinosaur area around the mid-1870s, living like a hermit in several different caves he called home before building himself a couple of cabins. A likeable man, Lynch helped and visited with homesteaders, enjoyed telling tall tales, and lived within and near Dinosaur National Monument for 40 years.

Josie Bassett Morris was a homesteader ahead of her time for a woman of that era. In 1913, she built herself a cabin along Cub Creek and lived there for 50 of her 90 years. Visitors can visit Morris’ homesite, located at the end of the Tour of the Tilted Rocks Scenic Drive.

Among the human history of what is now a national monument are two men whose names you should remember: John Wesley Powell and Earl Douglass. These two men, in their respective fields, helped to put what is now Dinosaur National Monument on the map and in the public’s collective consciousness.

John Wesley Powell with Paiute Tau-Gu, ca unknown / NPS file

John Wesley Powell, a former soldier of the Union Army during the Civil War, who lost his right arm during the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, was not one for letting a little thing like a missing arm stop him from exploring the Southwest. Powell even became the first recorded hiker to summit Pikes Peak in Colorado.

During these Southwest explorations, Powell heard of the unexplored Colorado Plateau canyon country. In 1869, he led a company of men down the Green and Colorado rivers from Green River, Wyoming to St. Thomas, Nevada, the first group to float those rivers in their entirety. This trip was not without hardships, including wrecked boats, rotten food, fistfights, and desertion.

Because photographs of this expedition were never captured, due to the first trip’s difficulties, Powell embarked upon a second journey there in 1871-1872, this time with a photographer chronicling the entire trip. Not only was the area accurately mapped, but many of those images you view today are the first-known photographs of the prominent landmarks along the river corridor. And, many of the landmark names, such as Gates of Lodore, Rainbow Park, and Split Mountain, are the names originally given by the Powell expedition.

Earl Douglass (left) and William Holland, director of Carnegie Museum (right) ca 1909, Dinosaur National Monument / NPS file

In 1909, history of another sort was made at this yet-unestablished national monument. Paleontologist Earl Douglass was tasked by Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania with the mission to find dinosaur skeletons for the museum’s Dinosaur Hall. Traveling to Utah in 1909, after initial disappointing searches, Douglass hit paydirt in August, when he discovered eight Apatosaurus tailbones in position. While excavating those bones, Douglass discovered more dinosaur bones mixed in with the Apatosaurus bones, cementing his full-time job as fossil hunter and excavator at this area in Utah, managing what was now named Carnegie Quarry.

Douglass’ discovery achieved worldwide fame for this area in Uta, and in 1915, Dinosaur National Monument was established to protect and conserve the 80 acres of that dinosaur quarry. President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the reach of the national monument in 1938 with the addition of another 200,000 acres (80,937 hectares) to protect the Green and Yampa rivers and their surrounding ecosystems.

This national monument designation did not necessarily mean protection of the land, however. In 1949, the Bureau of Reclamation released plans for a series of dams to be built for hydroelectric power, irrigation water, and recreation purposes. One of these dams - the Echo Park Dam – was located within Dinosaur National Monument, at the confluence of the Green and Yampa rivers. This proposed dam not only threatened the river corridors, but also the ecosystems and cultural history within the monument itself.

According to park staff:

When the Park Service expressed concerns that the dam would flood the canyons, forever destroying their history and natural beauty, conservationists from across the country came to Dinosaur’s defense. Fearing that a dam in Echo Park would set a precedent for development in other National Parks, they fought to bring Echo Park to national attention through pictures, compelling essays, news features, and films. In 1956, the battle came to an end when legislation for the project was signed without a dam at Echo Park. Following the decision, conservationists capitalized on the public support they’d built to campaign for more wilderness protection. Today, many historians credit the Echo Park Dam controversy as a landmark event in US environmental history that foreshadowed other achievements, such as the Wilderness Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Perhaps most importantly, the decision on Echo Park displayed to lawmakers that many Americans did not want development in their National Parks and Monuments.

Hardly mentioned but still worthwhile to note: Split Mountain Dam was proposed around the same time as the Echo Park Dam. This dam would also have been built within Dinosaur National Monument. The Sierra Club published a 1954 bulletin regarding the issues of both these dams. Neither of these dams came to fruition and the character of Dinosaur National Monument remains.