Three Trails and a Museum: Short hikes into the Bone Rush era of the Western Slope

The region around Grand Junction and Fruita is known for its stunning high deserts and deep canyons, but at the turn of the 20th century, the landscape earned its moniker in more ways than one.

This area, known locally as the Western Slope, became the staging ground for a fierce, grueling paleontological gold rush. Rival museums dispatched tactical teams into the sweltering, unforgiving badlands to battle the elements—and each other—for the biggest prehistoric spoils on Earth.

Today, you don’t need a pickaxe or a month-long expedition to experience this thrilling chapter of history. By tying together one fantastic museum and three short, accessible hikes, you can step directly into the trenches of Colorado’s dinosaur boom.

Here is your field guide to exploring the front lines of the Bone Rush.

The Briefing Room: Dinosaur Journey Museum

Every major campaign requires a well-equipped base camp. Before you head out to the historical quarries, you need to understand the scale of what these early expeditions were fighting for.

The Dinosaur Journey Museum serves as the perfect briefing room for the Bone Rush era. In the early 1900s, eastern institutions sent scouts west because the Morrison Formation—a massive band of sedimentary rock exposed along the Western Front—was a tactical goldmine for late Jurassic fossils. Inside the museum, you get to see the spectacular results of those early campaigns. You’ll find colossal bones pulled from the local dirt, robotic recreations of the beasts that once patrolled the valley, and a working paleontology lab. It sets the stage, showing you exactly what was at stake when crews deployed into the harsh desert a century ago.

Trail 1: Riggs Hill

• The History: In the summer of 1900, Elmer S. Riggs, an ambitious paleontologist from Chicago, arrived in the Grand Valley looking to make his mark. He struck paleontology gold on this very hill, capturing the ultimate prize: the partial skeleton of a massive, previously unknown sauropod he named Brachiosaurus altithorax.
• The Experience: As you walk this short, quiet loop, interpretive plaques guide you through the exact spots where Riggs’ team camped and dug into the hillside. Walking Riggs Hill gives you a profound appreciation for the sheer, backbreaking labor required to haul out “heavy artillery”—bones so massive they required specialized, horse-drawn wagons to transport them out of the western badlands.

Trail 2: Dinosaur Hill

• The History: Fresh off his monumental success at Riggs Hill, Elmer Riggs returned to the Western Front in 1901 and set his sights on a prominent mound just outside of modern-day Fruita. Here, his team excavated a nearly complete Apatosaurus skeleton (historically known to many as Brontosaurus).
• The Experience: Dinosaur Hill highlights the grueling scale of Bone Rush operations. The trail winds past massive, excavated craters that still resemble the aftermath of a heavy bombardment. It took a crew of men weeks of wielding heavy steel tools and plaster to carve the giant beast out of the earth. Today, you can stand in the very trench where the Apatosaurus was jacketed in plaster, looking out over the Colorado River valley just as Riggs did from the front lines over a century ago.

Trail 3: Fruita Paleo Loop Trail

• The History: While the early days of the Bone Rush were defined by the hunt for massive trophies, the Fruita Paleontological Area represents the next evolution of the campaign. By the late 20th century, scientists realized this specific pocket of the badlands held something just as valuable: perfectly preserved micro-fossils. This area yielded some of the world’s most significant discoveries of late Jurassic mammals, early lizards, and Fruitadens, one of the smallest known dinosaurs.
• The Experience: This rugged, scenic loop offers a sharp contrast to your first two hikes. Instead of looking at massive craters, you are walking through a landscape where paleontologists quite literally engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the dirt, getting on their hands and knees to sift for fossils the size of a fingernail. It shows the evolution of the Western Front—proving that sometimes, the most groundbreaking discoveries weren’t the giants, but the tiny creatures taking cover in their shadows.

The Verdict

You don’t have to be an extreme adventurer to experience the thrill of the hunt. By spending a morning at the Dinosaur Journey Museum and an afternoon wandering Riggs Hill, Dinosaur Hill, and the Fruita Paleo Loop, you can conquer the geography of Colorado’s Western slope while standing exactly where the pioneers of paleontology fought to change our understanding of the ancient world forever.