Fruita's rebirth began in many ways with the Dinosaur Diamond, a 460-mile route through western Colorado and eastern Utah that capitalizes on the region's rich prehistory. The paleontological pilgrimage to Colorado began at the turn of the century, when Grand Junction dentist S. M. Bradbury wrote a letter to Elmer Riggs, assistant curator of paleontology at the Field Museum in Chicago. There were so many dinosaur bones in the Grand Valley that ranchers hauled them home as curios, Bradbury wrote. Riggs showed up in the late spring of 1900. Dry Mesa Quarry, discovered in the 1950s by a Delta couple, Ed and Vivian Jones, in an isolated region of the Uncompahgre Plateau, has yielded what paleontologists consider the most varied group of late Jurassic period dinosaurs in North America.
People still find bones all the time.
Harley Armstrong, regional paleontologist with the Bureau of Land Management in Grand Junction, often hears about them. When he was resident paleontologist at the Museum of Western Colorado there, people reported as many as 18 finds a week. One week's finds could keep us busy for a year. That's all in the eye of the beholder. The Black Ridge Canyons near Dinosaur National Monument show the power of wind and water to sculpt the landscape.