Dinosaur Valley State Park

The footprints date to the Early Cretaceous, when this part of Texas lay along the edge of a warm, shallow sea. Along the tidal flats, dinosaurs left prints in the sticky lime mud, which then dried, was covered by fresh sediment, and slowly turned to rock. The tracks were sealed away until the Paluxy River, cutting down over the last few thousand years, peeled back the younger layers and revealed the ancient trackways once more.

Two main kinds of tracks show up here. The sharp three-toed prints belong to a large theropod, a two-legged meat-eater of the kind related to Acrocanthosaurus. The huge, rounded, elephant-like prints come from a sauropod, an enormous long-necked plant-eater. In some places the two trackways run together, and paleontologists have long debated whether the meat-eater was following the plant-eater, one of the reasons these trails are studied around the world.

The tracks were brought to wide attention in the 1930s, and some of the best sauropod trackways were carefully excavated and shipped to museums, where they helped scientists picture how the giant animals actually moved. The find put tiny Glen Rose on the map as a place where the deep past was written plainly in the rock.

The Paluxy also became known for a long-running controversy. Certain oddly shaped tracks were once claimed to be human footprints mixed in with the dinosaurs. Careful study showed these to be eroded or partially infilled dinosaur tracks, unusual sauropod prints, and in some cases carved fakes, not human at all. The park today tells the accurate story: real dinosaur tracks, remarkable on their own, with no need for embellishment.

The Paluxy is a spring-fed Hill Country river, clear and shallow over pale limestone ledges, edged with bald cypress, sycamore, and oak. It is a gentle place to wade, swim, and hunt for tracks, and its clarity is exactly what makes the fossil footprints so easy to see when the water is low.

This is Comanche and Tonkawa country in its deeper history, plains and cross-timbers where those peoples hunted and camped long before the town of Glen Rose grew up along the river in the nineteenth century. The town later became a small resort known for its mineral wells, and the discovery of the dinosaur tracks gave it a new and lasting identity.

Away from the river, miles of trails climb through juniper and oak woodland, home to white-tailed deer, armadillos, foxes, and a rich bird life along the water. The park is popular with mountain bikers and hikers, and near the entrance stand two enormous fiberglass dinosaur models, leftovers from a world's fair exhibit, that have become a beloved photo stop.

Spring and fall are ideal, with mild weather and often clear, low water that shows off the tracks. Summer is hot but the river makes it bearable, and the water draws crowds on weekends. Winter is quiet and cool, and a dry winter can leave the trackways beautifully exposed for those who do not mind a chill in the river.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.