Dinos, Boots and a lot of Lonely Roads

RBK makes a friend outside FM Light

Johnston Homestead

Dinosaur National Monument is located in an area of the country most people will never see. There's a reason there aren't many people around here: there isn't much to do other than look at dinosaur bones. It's funny how when you drive for hours on deserted highways the smallest things get you excited, like signs for the F. M. Light & Sons western store, established in 1905, in Steamboat Springs. They had worked so hard to earn my business in a place no one else bothered to advertise, I HAD to stop. We were 90 miles from their store! The same was true for the informational turnouts sprinkled through Highway 40. I finally had to ask RBK to stop at one of the turnouts so I could see what type of information was being provided. Turns out it was the remains of a homestead of a former Colorado governor. Getting out of the car and standing there put me in the shoes of a homesteader for a moment or two. It's very, very quiet. I can't imagine living this way with the closest neighbor 40 miles away. Driving 40 East in Utah and Colorado was the loneliest stretch of road I've ever driven through.

Josie Barrett

At the Dinosaur National Monument we learned that this area of the country was one of the last to be inhabited by European Americans and I would say not many have filled in the gaps since they first arrived. There's a section at the beautiful new visitors center devoted to pioneers from the area. One of these is Josie Barrett. There are several pictures of her and the homestead. A local woman near me had brought an out-of-town friend with her and they were perusing the exhibit. Stopping at the photo of Josie she pointed to the photo and said, "I knew this woman here. She was a real mutha. You didn't mess with her."

The rest of the dinosaur exhibit was, obviously devoted to older creatures. As we pulled up to the admission window we were told that since it was National Park Week, we'd be enjoying free admission. Wow! I think this is an idea that should catch on in other places as well. The two facilities near Vernal, UT had just been completed in 2011. One, called the Quarry Exhibit Hall has the only actual excavated and protected wall of dinosaur remains in the country. The excavated stone wall is some 20 - 30 feet high and 150 feet long. Some of these bones were six or eight feet long. There are 1500 fossils and 100 species of dinosaurs there including stegosaurus, allosaurus and camasaurus. The full skeletons were removed in 1909 by paleontologist Carl Douglass with the Carnegie Museum.

Wall of Dinosaur Bones