Dinosaur Quarry Expansion – Jensen UT

Description

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted work at Dinosaur National Monument at the site that is now a part of the Quarry Exhibit Hall near Jensen, Utah.  Relief workers expanded the quarry face where abundant dinosaur fossils had been discovered in 1909 by Earl Douglass, a paleontologist collecting for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

President Woodrow Wilson declared the original acre fossil site to be a National Monument in 1915 and President Franklin Roosevelt expanded the monument to its present size in 1938.  The monument contains over 800 paleontological sites.

We are uncertain of the exact dates of the WPA work.

UEN.org: “The quarry site was declared a National Monument in 1915. During the 1930’s, a WPA (Works Progress Administration) project expanded the quarry face, but no new fossils were exposed or excavated. The monument boundaries were expanded in 1938 from the original 80-acre tract surrounding the dinosaur quarry in Utah, to its present extent of over 200,000 acres in Utah and Colorado, encompassing the spectacular canyons of the Green and Yampa Rivers. In addition to its dinosaurs, the National Park Service manages and protects a variety of other natural and cultural resources within these expanded boundaries.”