Do your kids (and you!) like dinosaurs? Do you have the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s dinosaur exhibit memorized? In May, you’ll have another option – the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience!
The Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience will be a museum combined with outdoor education and recreational opportunities. Families and kids of all ages can experience everything from science-focused interactive displays, full-scale dinosaur fossil casts, skinned animatronic dinosaur exhibits, and hands-on exhibits with real dinosaur fossils, as well as recreational-focused activities including a multi-story ropes course.
Starting in the 1870s, two of the world’s leading paleontologists and arch rivals, Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, both traveled to Cañon City to conduct digs that became famously known as the Bone Wars. Fortunately, the winner of this (nonviolent) war was science, as both Marsh and Cope helped to unearth many significant fossil finds that put Cañon City on the paleontological map, and which bolstered scientific knowledge of these magnificent creatures that once walked the earth’s crust.
“Cañon City has a deep, rich paleontological history that we want to celebrate and share with the world,” said Zach Reynolds, director of the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience. “This began with Marsh and Cope and continued through my grandfather’s time digging in the 1950s with noted local paleontologist Freddy Kessler, right up through contemporary finds. There’s a local passion for dinosaurs in the Garden Park paleontological area, and we’re excited to expand on it in a family-friendly, kid-focused educational environment.”
Adult admission fees at the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience will start at $12, children aged 5-12 will start at $8 and children 4 and under are free, with package deals available).
