Dinosaur I Dinosaur National Monument joins parks, programs and partners across the country to encourage everyone to find their park and share their stories online at FindYourPark.com.
The National Park Service and the National Park Foundation presents Find Your Park as a public awareness and education campaign celebrating the milestone centennial anniversary of the National Park Service in 2016 and sets the stage for its second century of service.
Find Your Park invites the public to see that a national park can be more than a place. It can be a feeling, a state of mind or a sense of American pride. Beyond vast landscapes, the campaign highlights historical, urban, and cultural parks, as well as the National Park Service programs that protect, preserve and share nature, culture and history in communities nationwide.
While designed for kids age 5 to 12, everyone is invited to complete the Wilderness Junior Ranger book, learn how to be safe and respectful explorers and earn a limited edition Wilderness patch while supplies last.
“While the entire National Park Service is getting ready to celebrate 100 years in 2016, we have the honor of jumpstarting celebrations with an important anniversary of our own. Dinosaur National Monument was established on Oct. 4, 1915, and this season will be full of special events recognizing the Dinosaur Centennial throughout 2015,” said Monument Superintendent Mark Foust. “As our National Park Week activities suggest, the diversity of things you can discover if you Find Your Park in Dinosaur ranges from sediments to the stars and everything in between.”
“Each month’s activities through October will highlight a different reason Dinosaur National Monument remains an important place for scientists, history buffs, adventure seekers, nature lovers, artists and more,” he said.
The actual anniversary on Oct. 4 will be celebrated all weekend with special activities, an employee reunion and cake. Dinosaur Centennial activities will wrap up with National Fossil Day in mid-October.
Additional activities will take place outside of the monument, many of them sponsored by a growing number of community-based Dinosaur Centennial Partners.
So far, partners include Intermountain Natural History Association, Uintah County Travel and Tourism, Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, Uintah County Library and Heritage Museum, Friends of the Yampa, Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, Conservation Colorado, Bedrock Depot, Vernal Brewing Co, Uintah Mountain Club, National Parks Conservation Association, SWCA Environmental Consultants, chambers of commerce from the Vernal area and Rangely, and the list keeps growing. Additional events are in the planning process, and more ideas are welcome.
“My hope for both the Find Your Park and Dinosaur Centennial campaigns,” says Foust, “is that everyone feels genuinely welcome to visit and find out for themselves what makes this corner of northeast Utah and northwest Colorado a premier unit of the National Park Service.”
