Round Trip Distance: 0.4 miles
Difficulty: Easy
Elevation: 5740 - 5766 feet
Cellphone: 0 bars
Time: 45 mins.
Trailhead: Visitor Center
Fee: $5/adult (or Interagency Pass), Youth under 16 free
Attractions: Dinosaur quarry, wheelchair accessible
The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry is located about 30 miles south of Price, Utah. Paleontologists have excavated over 12,000 bones, belonging to at least 74 individual dinosaurs, making this the densest concentration of Jurassic-age dinosaur bones ever found. More than 65 museums worldwide have skeletons that were reproduced from Cleveland-Lloyd dinosaur remains. And, besides all the dinosaur bones, they have also found an actual fossil dinosaur egg. The whole visit is worth seeing a novelty like that.
For directions and a map to the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry see our post for the Rock Walk trail or visit the BLM's website for the quarry. Since the site is open only seasonally from late March to the end of October you may want to contact them to be sure they are open and to check the current road conditions.
A lifesize replica of an adult allosaurus awaits visitors inside of the museum.More than 75% of the bones at Cleveland-Lloyd came from allosaurus and other carnivores.
A paved, wheelchair accessible, trail leads to the Butler buildings that protect the quarry.
At present only the east building is open to visitors.
Partially exposed bones can be seen that are still in the ground. At times, paleontologists and volunteers can be seen working in the quarry.
We are guessing that these darker bones are replicas that are left here in the manner that the original bones were discovered for visitors to see.
And be sure not to miss the actual fossil dinosaur egg.
We have always jokingly called these huge spheres dinosaur eggs. They are really concretions that grew from the accretion of minerals within the sandstone before it was fully lithified. This site is a few miles away along the road that leads to Highway 6 from Cleveland-Lloyd. Broken fragments at the site exhibit some crystalyn veins and the spheres appear to have grown in a concentric manner layer after layer. And to give them some perspective the one in the center of this picture is 8 to 10 feet in diameter. We thought about posting this location as the Dinosaur Eggs site but we haven't as yet. These are probably part of the Mesa Verde formation that was laid down long after the dinosaurs disappeared from the existence.
The more that you read about the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry the more interesting it becomes. The town of Price has a very nice museum that you might consider visiting prior to coming to the quarry. They even have a mastedon. Many things seem to get more valuable the more that you know about them and Cleveland-Lloyd falls into that category. If you would like to see it for yourself then all you have to do is 'Take a hike'.
