Center deteriorating at Dinosaur monument By PAUL FOY, Associated Press Writer
Wed May 24, 6:18 AM ET



VERNAL, Utah - With no money yet to replace it, the National Park Service can only watch as a visitor center that was built over a dinosaur bone quarry slowly splits apart, making do with patchwork repairs as the building slowly crumbles.

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It's been a problem at the center at Dinosaur National Monument since it was built in 1957, but officials say the pace of the disintegration is picking up. Gummy, clay soil under the building swells when wet and the concrete basement floor has warped into something like ocean rollers. When the bentonite clay soil dries, it crackles like popcorn and shifts parts of the building again.

"It's like a fun house," said Dan Chure, chief paleontologist at the monument. "There's some everyday work that needs to be done to make sure the doors close."

The Quarry Visitor Center, about 20 miles east of Vernal, is considered safe — for now. Officials keep it open with stopgap repairs, and keep track of a spider web of cracks on exterior walls.

Plans to fix or rebuild the building are on a wish list subject to congressional approval. The National Park Service wanted to start work in 2008, but last summer's Gulf Coast hurricanes and the war in Iraq forced a reallocation of federal spending that delayed the work at least until 2010, said Becky Nebs, who supervises building projects for the Park Service's Intermountain Region.

An extensive rehabilitation is estimated to cost $6.9 million and would anchor the center to bedrock with 80-foot-deep foundation pillars. It would cost more to tear the building down and replace it, a subject of debate inside the Park Service because that would strip the building's designation as a National Historic Landmark.

The center, shoehorned between a pair of sandstone ridges near the Green River, is the only place at the monument to see dinosaur fossils and gets about 300,000 visitors a year — a figure that briefly shot up to a half-million after the movie "Jurassic Park" was released in 1993.

It was built partly over a sandstone ridge where in 1909 Carnegie Museum paleontologist Earl Douglass spotted eight fossilized Brontosaurus tail bones.

Douglass spent 15 years excavating what turned out to be a bounty of bones from an area barely the size of a basketball court. In the 1930s, a WPA crew split open the ridge to reveal more dinosaur fossils and the National Park Service reopened the quarry in 1953 for careful excavation. Today more than 2,000 bones are still embedded in a tilting slab of sandstone inside the visitor center's atrium.

The visitor center houses some park offices, a gift shop, workshops for chiseling Jurassic-era fossils from rock and a glass atrium that extends over the bone graveyard.

Most visitors are oblivious to the creeping damage at the visitor center, said Mary Risser, superintendent of Dinosaur National Monument.

The atrium is cracking open like a clamshell under relentless ground pressure, leaving a 4-inch gap that workers patched with insulating foam. Overhead, a ceiling beam hangs unsupported at one end, having pulled too far away to be reattached.

The need for continual repairs is a drain on the staff, which also has to keep up with maintenance of campgrounds, roads and trails, officials said.

And there's another problem: The glass walls "move when the wind blows — it's a little bit of a concern to us," said Gary Mott, facility manager at Dinosaur National Monument. He said the building's "saving grace" was a steel framework that keeps it from collapsing.

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Stupd matince. they should be fired.

Don't blame the maintenance for not having the funds to repair the visitor center! The NPS is suffering badly in its budget lately. Parks all over the country are having to shut down visitor centers, cut staff, educational programs, and maintenance.

Here's a couple articles about the current problems:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-0...nal-parks_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-11-parks_x.htm

"A study of 12 popular parks issued last month by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, found that eight weren't getting enough funds to keep up with inflation, and all 12 were cutting services, including "visitor center hours, educational programs, basic custodial duties and law enforcement."

In other words, they're cutting everything they offer.

As a former Park Service employee, with a mother in NPS natural and historical preservation, a father (retired) in NPS law enforcement, and a stepfather (retired) in NPS administration, along with many friends in various positions, I can guarantee maintenance is not to blame. They're doing the best they can with what they have, but since they don't have what they need, well, it's no wonder things are going so badly.

Corporations like Wal-Mart and Kodak have already been sponsoring the NPS and donating money and equipment. I just hope we don't end up with privatized national parks.

And yes, it is really sad to see that going on at Dinosaur. I had a job offer to work there (which I really wanted to) but had to turn it down because I was already employed at Fossil Butte National Monument. Of course, FoBu didn't have the budget to keep me for the year or even hire me back for summer (or anyone else) so I doubt I would have had better luck at Dinosaur. In fact, I've only had one offer the whole year for NPS employment and they ended up having to scrap that position.

I'd better take a trip out to Dinosaur, just in case...

Edit: Thanks for the article, frogfish!

I have been there, its a really nice place...I hope they save it before it goes down. We need Gov't funding!

True..... blame the selfish citizens

no blame bush. i think i saw a report on i think it was ether 60 minutes or 20/20 that all the national parks in america are not getting the funds they need for the upkeep or even to stay open. they get that money from the government. but as we all know that corporate slave bush doesn't give two sh!&@ about that. so until we get a real president i don't think they are going to get any help any time soon

Great article Frogfish

Damn shame, I guess the war efforts over the past five years have contributed to this.


What about the local communiy? Any chance of a community drive to repair - callling all tradesmen and all that, preserve for the future generations?

A real president i want you to
appologise because Bush is sitting
here now in his footy pajamas
and eating a big bowl of pasetty

But realy you can't blame everything on
the President you also have to blame the
public for not trying to set up a fund. What
i mean is people can whine, but unless they
try to do something whinning is useless

Well, it doesn't matte rif the public puts more money into it in official terms. There's no guarantee it will go where we want it, even if there's an official request. Personally, I'd like to change the percentage of my dollar that goes to education, health care, and the national parks, but I can't really dictate that. And public donation is just like school financial aid. Whatever you make over the summer or recieve in scholarships is taken out of the estimated financial aid you receive, so in the end, it comes out the same. Which blows. :\

Maybe psyche...