Great Museums of Western Colorado Part One

Hello Everyone,

Museums of Western Colorado, consisting of three major museum facilities, is the largest multi-disciplinary museum complex between Salt Lake City and Denver. It’s one of only thirteen accredited museums in Colorado by the American Alliance of Museums.

Visitors find the Museum of the West in Grand Junction. It offers extensive displays on the region’s cultural and natural history. In nearby Fruita, Dinosaur Journey’s focus is paleontology via its fossils, cast skeletons, and robotic reconstruction of dinosaurs. It also has a working paleontology lab and provides half and full day opportunities to join paleontologists at four field sites. Cross Orchard Historic Site is a living history farm celebrating what was once a 243-acre fruit ranch and agricultural showcase in the early 1900's. It will be covered in part two.

MUSEUM OF THE WEST

Plan on spending several hours at this very fine museum that traces more than a thousand years of Western Colorado history. Exhibits cover a wide range of subjects ranging from Spanish exploration, Native American galleries, and a walk through uranium mine to firearms of such famous people as Kit Carson and Annie Oakley.

The Spanish Exploration and Distant Treasures in the Mist relates the stories of those explorers who ventured into Colorado. A highlight is viewing the equipment of these early adventurers and traders who came predominantly out of New Mexico. You’ll find an early Spanish flag and a 16th century map.

Treasures recovered by Grand Junction scuba diver Hans Schmoldt from the wreck of the El Mantancero, a Spanish merchant ship, are also displayed. It sunk off the Mexican coast on February 22, 1741 and was carrying part of the Spanish Colonial treasury, pig iron, tempered steel, and barrels and casks.

This exhibit has a write up of the Dominguez/Escalante expeditions that came through Colorado and a display of Spanish armor. You will also see Spanish Colonial naval cannons circa 1760 as well as a 15th century cannon and a halberd which resembles a spear.

Two Native American galleries are not to be missed. It includes Philip Holstein’s incredible collection of prehistoric pottery from the Colorado Plateau. The first gallery houses pottery from Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mimbres cultures. The case filled with Hohokam pottery was found at Casa Grande in Arizona. It consists of two periods. The earlier one was from 900 to 1350. The other pottery, decorated with frogs, is from a later period. The Anasazi case’s pottery is red as well as black and white and dates from 950 through 1150 AD.

The second gallery houses rock-art panels from the Fremont and Ute peoples, Navajo rugs, Kachina dolls, and Apache basketry. Take time to view the thousand year old Fremont artifacts consisting of gaming pieces, flakes, baskets, bone and antler tools, figurines, and arrowheads. Read about the Aztec and Ute legends. One case is filled with Ute artifacts such as a winter jug, pottery, basketry, beads, and buckskin.

You’ll see a mannequin of a baseball player in the next section. Baseball was popular in Colorado and still is with their current team, the Rockies. But in 1862, the Denvers, nicknamed the Blue Stockings, played baseball under a different set of rules than modern day. Back in those days, until 1910, baseball was written “base ball.”

Players could catch balls on the fly or after the first bounce for an out. Pitchers threw underhanded from 45 feet away. There was only one umpire, who stood halfway between first base and home plate. If a runner crossed home plate, he had to report to the scorer’s table or the run didn’t count.

The Thrailkill Firearms Gallery is touted as one of the West’s finest collection of firearms. It includes a Winchester collection of rifles dating between 1846 to 1863, Civil War carbines, and pistols, and weapons from Chief Ouray, Buffalo Bill Cody, the Butch Cassidy Gang, Kit Carson, and Annie Oakley. It also has a collection of Mesa County sheriffs’ pistols.

The Annie Oakley guns consist of a matched pistol set. One is a Smith & Wesson Model 2 .38 caliber single action revolver. The other is a Smith & Wesson .22 caliber model Number 1 third issue revolver.

Annie Oakley met her future husband and sharpshooter, Frank Butler, during a rifle match on Thanksgiving Day in 1875. The two joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1875 and toured with him for 17 years. In 1890, Frank presented Annie with a similar set of matched pistols.

The Kit Carson pistol was found by homesteader John Lurvey in 1885 at Carson Hole, Colorado. He found evidence that Carson had abandoned camp and found the Colt Dragoo revolver that is now on display. The first models of these pistols were manufactured from 1850 to 1898. Since Lurvey’s discovery of the camp, the area has always been known as Carson’s Hole. When the pistol was found, it had three chambers loaded, one with a percussion cap. Unfortunately, the belt and holster were beyond repair.

Next to the collection is the Western Investigators Team forensic lab. The team is composed of the Museum of Western Colorado staff, scientists, consultants, and college interns. They work together to solve Western mysteries through historical research and by using the latest in scientific technology.

This exhibit has Alferd Packer memorabilia and an interactive to help solve this case. During the winter of 1874, he and five companions tried to cross the San Juan Mountains to get to the Los Pinos Indian Agency. They planned to go to a gold strike in Breckenridge, Colorado. In April, only Packer ventured out of the mountains. He claimed that one of the prospectors, Shannon Bell, killed the others and he killed Bell out of self defense. He was charged and found guilty of murdering and partially eating his five fellow prospectors. Packer served 16 years in prison of a 40-year term. He died in 1907 still claiming his innocence and that he only killed Bell.

The 1862 Colt pistol that killed Bell later became part of the Thrailkill collection and has been given to this museum. It was discovered in an excavation in 1950. Recent forensic evidence shows Packer was telling the truth. You can read the whole story on the Museums of Western Colorado web site under Western Investigators.

You might be interested in the museum’s uranium mine. Walk through this and discover a miner hard at work. You can also learn about the state’s uranium through the museum’s interactive sound and exhibit stations. Mining started in 1872 and continued to about 2008.

Next take in recreated historic Grand Junction. The town has an old fashioned boardwalk and prominent historical buildings. They have a fire hose from 1886 and one from 1910. Admire the school with its student desks, teacher desk, blackboard and a Greek Revival facade. Featured inside the Park Opera House, with its faux brick and Italianate facade, is a couple dressed in finery for the night’s performance.

Across the street is the Pastime Saloon. Its restored bar dates from the Leadville, Colorado mining days. It has the bar’s original cash register and gramophone and a tipped over card table complete with gambler and saloon girl guns from the Thrailkill collection.

Step into the telephone booth for an interactive. You can select the time period and hear an operator from 1895, 1943, and 1954.

Another section has a time line from 1880 through 1999 with national and international highlights for each year. Three cases are full of artifacts from these years. For example, you will see a 1920's typewriter. The area also has a 1921 American La France Combination Pumping Engine Hose Car and an 1898 Steam Pumper.

At Aviation on the Western Slope, you can climb into half of a Cessna 150 manufactured in 1959. You’ll also see signage on how an airplane flies, the dials in the cockpit, and what it takes to become a private pilot.

The “Wild” Western Technology Gallery is an extensive display. View paintings of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1903 visit to Colorado. He stayed at the Glenwood Springs Hotel in Glenwood. You’ll learn about the origin of the teddy bear and about Roosevelt’s dog Skip and hear Roosevelt actually speak about the Colt/Browning machine gun.

You can climb into a full size stagecoach. It traveled from 1892 through 1925 from Grand Junction to Book Cliffs. Check out saddles, mostly from the 1880's, and see more pistols and rifles.

After touring the museum, you may want to go to the top of the Sterling T. Smith Educational Tower. It provides a 360-degree view of the surrounding area from the observation platform (75 feet above ground level). It has a number of panels interpreting downtown’s historic preservation efforts and the geology, archaeology, and history of the region. Additional cost for self guided tower tours is $3.50 and $4 for guided tours.

You can visit this museum at 462 Ute Avenue in Grand Junction. Their telephone number is (970) 242-0971. Hours are May 1 to September 30 Monday through Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m; Sunday, noon to 4:00 p.m. During the rest of the year, they are closed on Sunday and open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admissions are
$7 for adults, $6 for seniors, and $4 for children.

DINOSAUR JOURNEY MUSEUM

Located in nearby Fruita, this museum contains fossils, cast skeletons, and five robotic reconstructions of dinosaurs found in western Colorado and surrounding areas. Displays are arranged by geological periods such as Cretaceous and Jurassic. What appeals, particularly to children, are the hands-on displays where they can experience a simulated earthquake or make their own dinosaur tracks in a sandbox. At the “quarry site”, youngsters can uncover actual Jurassic dinosaur bones. Adults will want to go upstairs for a bird’s-eye view of the working laboratory on the ground floor. In that room, dinosaur bones are prepared for display while in the collections room, scientists study dinosaurs and other animals.

Start by watching their 55-minute movie, “Dinosaurs on the Western Slope.” It provides a history of important paleontology digs that have occurred in western Colorado such as the Fruita Paelo area, and the Mygatt-Moore Quarry. You’ll learn about the relationship between scientists and the Bureau of Land Management and how paleontologists do their work.

The area has been prime hunting ground for dinosaur bones. During the Jurassic Period, from 206 million to 146 million years ago, it was home to these creatures, inland seas and lakes, swamps, and streams. As the dinosaurs died, shale and sandstone from the Morrison Formation quickly covered their bodies. They remained protected until they were unearthed, starting with the 1880s settlers.

One of the major finds was by Elmer S. Riggs, Assistant Curator of Paleontology at the Field Museum in Chicago, in 1899. He had written rural towns in the Western United States about fossil findings.

Dr. S. M. Bradbury, president of the Western Colorado Academy of Science in Grand Junction wrote him saying ranchers had collected bones as curios since the early 1880s. This encouraged Riggs to come to Fruita in 1900 at an area now known as Riggs Hill. There one his field assistants uncovered a Brachiosaurus, a previously unknown dinosaur larger than any known before.

On Riggs’ expedition in 1901, in an area south of Fruita, he excavated the rear two-thirds of an Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus) Excelus. The dinosaur’s head, neck, and lower limbs had been exposed to the elements and washed away. The quarry area is now called Dinosaur Hill.

In 1937, Ed Hansen, a local collector, showed Edward Holt, a teacher working on his master’s degree in geology, a Stegosaurus tail vertebrae from Riggs Hill. Holt went into the field and found, 42 feet above Riggs’ quarry, partial skeletons of Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, and a possible Brachiosaurus. Holt left the well-preserved fossils intact as hoped they would be a natural exhibit. Unfortunately, hunters gradually removed pieces until all bones had vanished by 1960.

Now it’s time to explore the museum. One of the first casts you’ll notice is in the museum’s Cetaceous section. It’s the reconstruction of the head of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a chewed pelvic bone of an Apatosaurus who was probably attacked by an Allosaurus. You will also discover an animated Utahraptor from the early Cretaceous period. It is shown eating another dinosaur.

They’re located near the Hall of Tracks ranging from those from a heron to 220 million year-old dinosaur tracks from Colorado from a Duckbilled Grallator, which is a birdlike creature in appearance, and a crocodile. The tracks are touchable.

On one side of the Hall of Tracks, you’ll find a skeletal cast of a Camptosaurus, one of the most common herbivores from the Morrison Formation, 152 million years ago. Near it in a display case are the original fossil bones of Ceratosaurus Magnicornis, the first and only ever found. Its the official dinosaur of the city of Fruita. You can see his horn core, maxilla (jaw), femur (leg), and vertebrae.

Above the cave entrance, on the other side of the hall, is a mounted skull of Camarasaurus. This is one of the most common dinosaurs from the Morrison Formation’s Late Jurassic period. It was a large plant eater, known for its long neck and tail, that roamed 152 million years ago.

Next to it is a cast of the original arm of the Brachiosaurus . He was a sauropod (They had very long necks, long tails, small heads, and four thick, pillar-like legs) like the Camarasaurus. When its arm was attached to his body and his neck added, its head would have been 41 feet off of the ground. A cast of the skeleton is on display at Chicago’s Field Museum. In the case, you will find plaster and tools left behind by Riggs who found it.

In the animals of the Morrison Formation, you will find an animated Stegosaurus, Colorado’s state fossil. He had tail spikes which he used to drive off predators. Some spikes found in Rabbit Valley are in a small case near the tail. It is best known for its plates that run down its spine.

On the left side of the gallery is a juvenile Camarasaurus, This one was buried on a river bank in Dinosaur National Monument.

The Green River Formation has casts of a turtle as well as fossils of insects, plants, and fish from the Cretaceous, Tertiary periods. You’ll see fossils of a feather, fly larvae, a Crane fly, and a beetle. You’ll also see those of freshwater herring, trout, and perch. Look for the tanks holding live gar fish and Sucker-Mouth fish. Fossils found of the gar provide it hasn’t changed much. In this section, children can build a dinosaur puzzle.

In the Jurassic section, look for the Allosaurus. It was the most common carnivore dinosaur in western North America during the late Jurassic period. You’ll see its skull.. This large dinosaur, living 150 million years ago, weighed 2,000 to 3,000 pounds and could grow up to 35 feet in length. Known for its ferocity, it dined on herbivores using its sharp claws and teeth. It is the most common dinosaur found in the local quarries.

At Midnight at the Oasis, you’ll find an animated Dilophosaurus. It was one of the largest carnivores of the Late Jurassic period 193 million years ago. One of its most distinctive characteristics were the pair of rounded crests on its skull. You will also find an animated baby T. Rex and a Triceratops nearby at the Hell Creek Formation diorama. On display is a large Triceratop skull which is touted as one of the largest specimens ever found.

A temporary exhibition in 2017 from May 19 to August 5 is the Smithsonian traveling exhibit “Titanoboa: Monster Snake.” This snake was 48 feet long and weighed in at one-and-a-half tons. It lived 60 million years ago and is related to modern boa constrictors. The display includes the snake replica and the vertebrae from it. It’s a collaboration between the University of Florida’s Florida Museum of Natural History, the University of Nebraska, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. During its national tour, it will travel to 15 cities.

The snake was found by a scientific team working in one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines in La Guajira, Colombia. In 2002, a Columbian student visited the coal mine and found a fossilized leaf that hinted at an ancient rainforest from the Paleocene Era. Over the next decade, collecting expeditions from the Smithsonian Tropical Research and Florida Museum of Natural History led to more discoveries at what scientists believe is the first rainforest on Earth. Fossils finds include giant turtles and crocodiles, the first-known bean plants, and some of the earliest banana, avocado, and cacao (chocolate) plants. The fossilized vertebrae of the Titanoboa was the most spectacular discovery.

You’ll also find a Fruitadens. At one pound, about the size of a chicken, it’s the smallest plant eating dinosaur in the world. It was uncovered in the Fruita paleontology area by George Callison and his crew at California State Long Beach in 1976 and received its name in 2009.

In the section covering the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, you will also find a reconstruction of a Brachiosaurus right foreleg excavated in 1900. It was one of the largest dinosaurs that ever lived and one of the rarest of the large dinosaurs.

DINO DIGS

Those interested in paleontology, who are in Fruita during the summer, may want to sign up for one of the museum’s full, half day, and multi day adventures. The various expeditions are for those ages five and older. Those under age 16 must be accompanied by an adult on all participating expeditions. On all tours, a wide-brimmed hat, sturdy shoes or hiking boots, sun screen, and bug spray (biting gnats are common in May and early June) are strongly recommended.

The half day and full day tours are run from June through August. On the Mygatt-Moore half day expedition, digging for dinosaur bones, teeth, and plants takes place during the morning. Paleontologists will supply all the training and tools you need. It ends with a guided tour of the Paleo Lab at Dinosaur Journey. The cost is $75 per participant and includes water, lemonade, and Gatorade; guide instruction; and tools. It’s held one day each in June, July, and August. The minimum age is five.

An option at Mygatt-Moore Quarry is a full day tour instead concluding with a guided tour of the Paleo Lab. Cost is $140 per person including transportation, instruction of the guide, and tools. Water, lemonade, and Gatorade along with a picnic lunch are included. Tours are offered multiple times each month from June through August. Minimum age is five.

At the Dinosaur Journey Paleo Lab tour, participants spend a full day in the museum’s Fossil Preparation Lab with paleontologists. They’ll learn how to clean and prepare fossils that have been excavated from the field. This will be done by actively washing the screens, removing rock from bone with brushes and picks, and replicating fossil material at the molding and casting center. All will be done under the guidance of expert paleontologists. The cost is $75 per participant including lunch, tools, safety gear, and instruction. It’s held one day each monthly from June through August. Minimum age is 12.

In May, the museum held Callison Quarry half day digs, located three miles from the museum in the Fruita Paleo Area. Those attending this can probe through soft shale to spot lizard and pterosaur bones, mammal jaws and teeth, and maybe the rare crocodilian Fruitachampsa between layers of mudstone. The quarry is world famous for having the smallest of dinosaurs. Cost is $65 per participant including transportation, guide instruction, and tools. Minimum age is seven.

In May and June, a fossil prospecting hike through the bandlands of the Western Slope took place as participants look for new fossil sites. Cost is $65 per person including transportation, lunch, and guide. Minimum age is seven.

In 2017, two day expeditions were conducted in June and July of the Mygatt-Moore Quarry and DJ Prep Lab. Cost was $215 per person including transportation, lunch, instruction from the guide, and tools. Minimum age was twelve.

On July 25 through 27, Dinosaur Journey led a combination tour which included rafting of the Colorado River, a one day dig at Mygatt-Moore Quarry, and a one day trip via van to Moab to find dinosaur tracks. Cost was $375 per person including transportation, raft rental, guide, lunch, instruction, and tools. Minimum age was seven.

To make reservations for any of these, payment in full is required to the museum’s Paypal account. An option is making a 20% nonrefundable deposit at registration time by calling (970) 242-0971 ext. 2212. The remaining balance must be paid 15 days prior to the expedition date or a $25 service charge will be required to hold a reservation. For information, call (888)488-3466.

The museum does have cancellation fees. Prior to three weeks in advance, the tour will be refunded at 80%. Cancellations within two to three weeks prior to the tour date are refunded at 50%. All cancellations within one week and all no-shows forfeit the full price with no refunds or credits issued.

Dinosaur Journey is located at 550 Jurassic Court in Fruita. Their telephone number is (970) 858-7282. Hours are May 1 through September 39 daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The rest of the year, it’s Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays noon to 4 p.m. Admission is $9 for adults, $7 for seniors, and $5 for children ages 3-12. The museum offers AAA discounts.