Walk on Jurassic dinosaur trackways at Dinosaur Ridge
Where Stegosaurus was found
A tilted ridge of Dakota Sandstone and Morrison Formation west of Denver, where dinosaur footprints and trace fossils sit exposed in the rock face beside a road you can walk along.
Why it's unique
This is where several of the dinosaurs everyone can name were first described. The 1877 excavations here produced the original Stegosaurus and Apatosaurus finds.
What makes it worth travelling for is that the evidence is still in the ground rather than in a museum. You are looking at Jurassic and Cretaceous trackways in the outcrop where they were laid down, at the roadside, at eye level. Most fossil sites are either quarried out or fenced off; here the ridge is the exhibit.
Before you go
Go early or late. Low, raking sun throws shadow across the footprint impressions and makes them legible; at midday the light flattens the rock and the tracks largely disappear.
It is an open walk along a ridge road rather than an indoor attraction, so weather matters and there is little shade.