Once a week, I walk the Harper’s Corner Trail in Dinosaur National Monument. It is a joyous ritual, punctuated by novel conversations with total strangers whom I will never see again. I never tire of the view from the trail down into Echo Park; a half mile below, the majestic monolith of Steamboat Rock rises above the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers. A tiny dirt road is visible, snaking down Pool Creek Canyon.
Never — not once — have I encountered anyone that regretted walking that narrow ridge. They might be tired or thirsty or soaked from a sudden downpour, but they are always happy to have witnessed this splendid landscape.
It was nearly half a century ago that I “met” Dinosaur. In 1977, my brother, Mark, and I heedlessly drove a Volkswagen Beetle down that Pool Creek Road. It was not really advisable for anything but high clearance 4WD. The road has ruts and sharp rocks buried beneath powdery dust.
Not knowing what to expect, we first descended past the vivid reds of Vivas Cake Hill. Then we stopped to admire the still-life of abandoned Pool Creek Ranch. It looked like a dusty cowboy might walk out the door at any second. Then we entered the sudden acid green of the corridor of cottonwoods in Pool Creek Canyon. Faint petroglyphs loomed above the purling water of Pool Creek. Cool darkness washed over us in Whispering Cave. We finally emerged at the foot of Steamboat Rock, towering 700 feet above us, with the Green River flowing peacefully beneath it.
I did not realize it at the time, but that was the beginning of my life-long connection to Dinosaur National Monument.
Hundreds of miles downstream, in 1903, Teddy Roosevelt stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon. He declared, “Leave it as it is… The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children and your children’s children and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see.”
Though president, Teddy had no way to protect the Grand Canyon from people who wished to make money off of it. However, in 1906, the Antiquities Act was passed by Congress. It granted any American president the right to designate special tracts of public land as protected “national monuments.”
On January 11, 1908, Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to designate the 800,000 acre Grand Canyon National Monument. In 1919, Congress belatedly decided that Grand Canyon deserved to join the NPS as a fully-fledged national park. That’s what often happens.
The National Park Service has guarded our national parks and monuments, for all Americans and for all of mankind. Yet today, rather than being supported in its mission, the Park Service is being undermined by its own government.
Park exhibits, painstakingly researched and brilliantly conceived, are being censored for telling hard truths about America’s history. Park budgets and staff are being dramatically slashed. And the current Secretary of Interior, Doug Burgum, who should be the fiercest advocate for parks, has issued the Secretarial Order “Unleashing American Energy,” which brazenly proposes the exploitation of national monuments for oil, gas and minerals.
Dinosaur is at risk of such exploitation.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” proposed a nearly $4 billion cut to national parks, national forests, wildlife refuges, wilderness and recreation areas, and more, which have already impacted staffing, maintenance, visitor services, resource protection and will likely impact paleontology research, which is central to the Dinosaur park’s mission.
It is a bitter thing to see something so worthwhile and uplifting sabotaged and defunded by its own government. I thought (and still hope) that the vast reservoir of goodwill that people have for the National Park Service would protect these special places. I am not so sure anymore.
Looking east from the Harper’s Corner Trail, I have a long view of the Yampa Bench Road disappearing into the distance. In 1977, my brother Mark and I finished our first visit by attempting to drive out that way. We suffered a flat tire on that road, and then a second. We had used our only spare. We limped out of Dinosaur on the smoking rim of the afflicted wheel of that hapless Volkswagen Beetle.
That was my bumpy, exciting introduction to one of the West’s great landscapes. In time, I came to work at Dinosaur as an interpretive ranger. Ultimately, I made my home in nearby Vernal. From my back porch, I can see the white cliffs of Dinosaur’s Split Mountain Canyon, gleaming in the distance. I worry about it a lot these days.
(Tom Elder) Tom Elder is a retired science teacher and one-time park ranger.
Tom Elder is a retired science teacher and one-time park ranger who loves all things Dinosaur National Monument.
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