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Saddle up to the Apache Motel, Moab’s most iconic boutique motel. 35 rooms, including the John Wayne suite- where your guests can stay where John Wayne stayed! An ultramodern build in 1955, this registered historic landmark was the home for Hollywood’s Classic Western’s elite and is now the retro-modern motel on the path to Sand Flats Recreation Area servicing bikers, jeepers, weary travelers, and National Park enthusiasts.
Welcome to Utahraptor State Park
Just outside Moab, a new park offers camping and recreation — and protection for paleontological and historical resources
Writing and photography by Rachel Fixsen
Artist Robert Gaston looks like a dinosaur dentist as he peers inside the jaw of the replica skeleton he’s installing in the visitor center at Utahraptor State Park, Utah’s new state park. The legs, tail, spine, numbered ribs—segments and individual bones are secured piece by piece. Once the assembly is complete, the long-necked, long-tailed, toothy model is silhouetted against the large windows looking out onto the Moab desert.
The skeleton is a 3D rendering of the Utahraptor, the park’s namesake and Utah’s state dinosaur. It also represents the paleontological value of the area, community support for the park, and the discoveries and partnerships that brought it into being.
Located just off of Highway 191 north of Moab, the park was designated by the state legislature in 2021 and is slated for an official grand opening ceremony in late May or early June. The campgrounds are open and the visitor center is being fitted with informational signs and displays covering not just the unique and significant paleontology of the area, but also its human history: a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp was located there in the 1930s and the compound was later briefly used as an internment center, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.
Aside from the history preserved at Utahraptor, the park showcases and protects a swathe of Moab’s stunning desert scenery. Views from the park span red rock cliffs, green-and-purple-tinted hills, and the La Sal Mountains in the distance.
A SIGNIFICANT FOSSIL SITE
According to a fact sheet issued by the Utah Department of Natural Resources, the Dalton Wells quarry, located within the park, is one of the largest dinosaur bone beds on the continent. Over 5,500
Top: Artist Robert Gaston installing a replica dinosaur skeleton in the visitor center of the new Utahraptor State Park outside of Moab in April. The species is a Utahraptor — the park’s namesake and Utah’s state dinosaur. Bottom: In what is today part of the Utahraptor State Park, the Dalton Wells Civilian Conservation Camp headquarters is pictured in the 1930s. [Courtesy of Utah State Historical Society]
bones from over 10 dinosaur species have been found at the site, including the Utahraptor, Gastonia, and Moabosaurus. Cast skeletons of creatures fossilized at Dalton Wells are displayed in dozens of museums around the world, and experts say there is more to be found.
Researchers have been finding fossils and dinosaur tracks in the Dalton Wells area for decades. The late Lin Ottinger, a legendary Moab figure who founded the venerable Moab Rock Shop on the north end of town, was an early explorer of the area. He brought a
paleontologist to the site to point out fossils he had found, prompting years of closer examination by experts.
“It’s one of the richest paleo areas in the world,” says Utah State Paleontologist Dr. James Kirkland, who discovered and named the Utahraptor in the 1990s. He has also identified and named several other species, including Gastonia, after Gaston, who created and installed the replica skeleton in the visitor center. Gaston also has deep ties to the area: while working for Ottinger one summer in the late 80s, he discovered a fossil in Dalton Wells that turned out to be from a species new to science.
Gaston is an artist by training, but he’s carved out a niche combining that skillset and mindset with paleontology at his business Gaston Designs, located in Fruita, Colorado. Gaston and his team—which includes his wife Elisa Uribe-Gaston, also an artist—use real fossils as a starting point in creating resin replicas of dinosaur bones and skeletons.
This page, bottom: Park Manager Brad Walker, left, and Lee Shenton, president of the Gastonia chapter of the Utah Friends of Paleontology. Opposite page, top: Volunteers help park staff ready the park for visitors in spring 2025. Bottom: Austin Hull, the park’s supervisor of seasonal employees, left, and Ben Carswell, maintenance supervisor, work in April to prepare the park for its grand opening.
Before designation as a state park, the area was used for dispersed primitive camping. As that use grew, so did problems like trash and human waste, damage to vegetation, and dust. Increasing damage to the area was one of the arguments for establishing the park.
“The {improvements) have been really interesting to watch,” Hull says. Before sites and roads were hardened and delineated, people drove pretty much anywhere, he says. With the introduction of signage, people began to camp and drive in designated spots.
“It’s been really cool watching it turn into a park,” Hull says. There are 88 new designated campsites, some primitive and some with RV hookups. There are bathroom and shower facilities, and there is housing for the park employees.
Hull has wanted to work in state parks since he was a kid, impressed by visits to parks in his home state of Texas—particularly Enchanted Rock State Park. He studied political science and public administration in college and is happy to now be in his dream field.
“I have yet to find a job in state parks that I don’t like,” Hull says.
As the volunteers worked their shovels, a visitor from Sandy, Utah returned to his campsite after a motorcycle ride on the dirt roads from the state park into Arches National Park. He’s been coming to Moab for 40 years, he says, and usually camps in Sand Flats Recreation Area, but says he’s impressed with the new campground—clean and organized, with access to Moab’s signature scenery.
Motorized recreation is a well-established activity in the area. The park encompasses the Sovereign trail system, popular with dirt bikes. Local volunteer groups, including the Red Rock 4-Wheelers and Ride With Respect, contributed work to get the trails in good shape and ready to be part of the park.
Mountain biking is also popular in the area. The Klonzo bike trail system is not inside the park, but access to it is through the park entrance. For riders heading straight to Klonzo, the entrance fee will be waived.
As of this writing, the entrance fee has not been determined, but it will be priced to allow the park to sustain itself financially. Entrance to the nearby Dead Horse Park State Park is $20 per vehicle for a day visit.
BECOMING A PARK
Park Manager Brad Walker moved to Moab this winter to take on the role. He has worked in state parks from Indiana to Alaska. At one park in the midwest, he oversaw a celebration of the park’s centennial anniversary.
“In my career, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to start a new park,” Walker says. “Going from something 100 years old to something brand new—that’s very intriguing.”
“The sky’s the limit here,” Walker says. For example, he’s considered developing guided hikes or astronomy talks, taking advantage of the park’s Dark Sky compliant lighting and starry nights.
“I have a million ideas,” he says, but for now, he’s “just starting with the basics.”
Most of the amenities are in place now: showers and flush toilets, shade structures and fire pits for the campsites, and the visitor center.
The displays inside the visitor center are nearing completion. Aside from the Utahraptor, there’s a Moabosaur tibia fossil (the real thing), a replica Gastonia skull, and one of the interior walls is decorated with a blown-up copy of researchers’ hand-drawn sketches of
the quarry site (complete with tape marks and water stains).
The visitor center also features historic photos of the CCC camp and the internment center from when it was in use. The Dalton Wells camp was in use from 1935 to 1943, built for CCC use in 1935, one of four camps in Grand County. Up to 200 men at a time lived there while they learned job skills and worked on projects to improve farm and ranch land in the area.
In 1943, the camp was repurposed as an isolation center for Japanese American inmates who were considered “troublemakers” at other internment camps.
Japanese Americans had been forcibly relocated from their homes in 1942 under Executive Order 9066, and sent to primitive internment centers in remote locations. In the following months, internees who were considered disruptive—sometimes simply for questioning their treatment—were removed from the larger camps and sent to “isolation” in Dalton Wells.
“It is important history to tell,” Hull says.
Even before all the facilities opened, the campgrounds have been in regular use.
“There’s always people here,” Walker says. “This is going to be a very popular base camp.”
Currently all the campsites are first come, first served, but soon they will be reservable through the park’s website.
Kirkland expects that the park will be a draw for dinosaur-lovers, a tourism boost for Grand County, and a way to help spread visitors out from crowded destinations like Arches
and Canyonlands national parks. He hopes it will spur more investment in the region’s paleontology—he’d like to see a paleontologist with expertise specific to the Grand County working in the area, and a federal paleontological repository.
“We have the best record on the planet,” Kirkland says, talking about fossils. “There is nowhere as good as Utah for this stuff.” n
A resin replica of a gastonia dinosaur in the park’s visitor center.
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Take to the skies
Commercial flights, scenic tours and adrenaline adventures at Canyonlands Regional Airport
Written by Sharon Sullivan
In 2008, Moab resident Lou Bartell strapped a mountain bike to the side of his hot air balloon basket and, along with a buddy, flew for 20 miles before landing the balloon in the backcountry. Then, Bartell unloaded the bike and rode it back to the truck while his friend packed up the balloon and hung out waiting to be picked up. Then they did it again, switching places. And that was the beginning of Bartell’s Canyonlands Ballooning, one of the flying-related adventure businesses based out of Canyonlands Regional Airport in Moab.
Nowadays, Bartell keeps busy piloting people from all over the world on hot air balloon flights over Bureau of Land Management property (without the added mountain bike ride). Flights include views of Arches National Park and Canyonlands in the
distance. And, on a clear day, you can see the Capitol Reef National Park area, approximately 70 miles away, says Bartell. The balloon rides, which take place from March to November, are based around a one-hour flying time that begins around sunrise. There
are several potential launch sites, including the airport, depending on wind speed and direction.
“It’s based on what we see each morning,” Bartell notes. “Every flight is different; none are the same. We’re going with the wind.”
Opposite page: A Skydive Moab customer enjoys the rush of freefall in a tandem jump with an instructor. [Courtesy of Skydive Moab] This page: A hot air balloon and a commercial jet are seen in this view of Canyonlands Regional Airport. [Courtesy of Canyonlands Regional Airport] Inset: The main terminal building at Canyonlands Regional Airport at 110 W. Aviation Way. [Photo by Murice D. Miller]
The public can take to the skies in other ways too – via Skydive Moab; Redtail Adventures, a scenic tour flight company; or another tour company called Pinnacle Helicopters.
Canyonlands Regional Airport, located 18 miles north of Moab, offers daily commercial flights to Denver and Phoenix via Contour Airlines. The airline has a partnership with American Airlines to use their hubs. Free shuttles are available between the airport and town. Taxis and “A Touch of Class Limousine” are also available.
Moab’s first airport was built in the late 1940s, and was located in Spanish Valley, about seven miles southeast of Moab, according to Jeff Richards’ 2004 article in Moab Happenings. By the 1950s, due to Moab’s uranium mining boom, airplanes had become a popular mode of travel, including for the
transport of mining supplies, Richards noted. He cited a McCall’s magazine article that stated many of Moab’s millionaires (from uranium mining) had their own private planes.
By 1959, Frontier Airlines began offering daily flights to Moab, from Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, and Farmington, New Mexico. The current airport was built a decade later. In 2004, Salmon Air operated a dozen round-trip flights from Moab to Salt Lake each week. Today, Contour Airlines is the provider, with daily flights between Moab and Denver, and Moab and Phoenix. Parking is available at the airport for $6 per night, $150 per month (or $120 per month for at least three consecutive months), or $900 for a year.
Bartell, the hot air balloonist, said he fell in love with aviation at a young age, when his father started taking him on airplane rides when he was 3 or 4-years-old. He had planned on becoming a commercial pilot, but then discovered ballooning while working at a winery in Napa Valley, California.
In Napa, Bartell began working on the grounds crew for a ballooning company, and eventually obtained his license to pilot hot air balloons – which he did in Napa Valley for seven years. Then, in 1991, he discovered Moab. There wasn’t a ballooning company in town at that time, so “I bought a balloon, got the necessary permits and off I went,” he says.
He pilots one balloon flight per day, always at sunrise. Upon landing, passengers enjoy – in the tradition
“We also charter aircraft for private individuals who need to go to Salt Lake City,” or other locations, such as Las Vegas, says Redtail Air Director of Operations Dan Wheeler. “The furthest we go is Phoenix. Someday we hope to have faster, bigger airplanes to go greater distances. Most trips are within a 500-mile radius of Canyonlands.”
Pinnacle Helicopters also offers daily scenic tours. Helicopters can fly lower, but are not allowed to fly directly over the national parks due to noise restrictions. Helicopter tours range from 20 minutes to an hour.
Redtail Jet Center, another division of Redtail, is the Fixed Base Operator for the airport, offering fuel, services and support to aircraft using the airport.
Andrea Erwin became interim director of the Canyonlands Regional Airport after the former director, Tammy Rowland, left her position in April. The county is using an employment firm that
deals specifically with airport personnel placement to find a new director, says Grand County Commission Administrator Mark Tyner. The company is currently vetting applicants received by the county. “We are hopeful this process will allow for interviews very soon,” Tyner says.
A beautification grant is allowing the airport to revitalize the area outside the terminal, near the entrance and outside waiting area, and an ongoing project is making improvements to the runway area, says Tyner.
“The airport is a valuable asset to our community,” Tyner says. “We will continue to look for ways to improve our services and benefits to our residents and visitors.” n
Top: A Skydive Moab customer and her instructor enjoy flying high above the Moab desert.
[Courtesy of Skydive Moab] Middle: Iconic Castleton Tower is visible through the top of a Canyonlands Ballooning hot air balloon. [Photo courtesy of Canyonlands Ballooning]
Bottom: Tim Whipple, left, and Hunter Maldonado staffing the Enterprise Rent-A-Car counter at Canyonlands Regional Airport. [Photo by Murice D. Miller]
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