Some visitors at this Utah state park are prying up dinosaur tracks imprinted in the sandstone and throwing them into a nearby reservoir

By Courtney Tanner

Published: 4 days ago
Updated: 2 days ago

As Josh Hansen untied his patrol boat, he could hear the splashes. ... He wasn’t sure how many there were before he got to the dock, but at least two heavy thunks sounded off the water while he started the engine. About 500 yards away and a few minutes’ distance from where he was, someone was throwing heavy slabs of stone over a cliff and into the reservoir below. Hansen raced for the opposite shoreline.

When he pulled in, a kid was about to toss another rock but paused. On the surface of the dusty red sandstone that he was holding were two toe imprints from a partial dinosaur track. ... “I saved that one,” Hansen recounted Thursday. The park manager regrets that he couldn’t get there sooner. “He had already thrown multiple {tracks in the water}.”

Some 200 million years ago, 8-foot-tall carnivorous dinosaurs trudged though the terrain in what is now northeastern Utah. The footprints they left behind are the basis for Red Fleet State Park about 10 miles outside Vernal. A trail runs past hundreds of the prehistoric raptor tracks stretching up a slickrock slope. And thousands of people come each year to see them.

Over the past six months, though, the site has been heavily vandalized. Visitors — much like the kid Hansen stopped two weeks ago — have been chipping out pieces of rock and hurling them into the the water.
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ctanner@sltrib.com

@CourtneyLTanner