Garden Park near Cañon City is public fossil land, not a free-for-all

North of Cañon City, Garden Park is one of the places where some of Colorado’s famous dinosaur bones came out of the ground. It is still public land today, and it is worth understanding what that means before you visit.

Garden Park is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that handles a lot of open land across Colorado. The area carries special protections because of its fossils, so it is not a place to dig for or carry off fossils, bones, or other protected fossil material. Those rules exist to keep what is left in the ground available to study. If you are curious about collecting rocks more generally, ask the BLM first — rules can be site-specific, and the posted rules at Garden Park are the ones that count.

Why a visitor or nearby resident should care: “public land” does not mean “do anything you want.” Garden Park is a good example of land that is open to enjoy but protected at the same time. You can walk it, look, and learn, but the fossils themselves stay put.

Before visiting, check the Bureau of Land Management’s Garden Park Fossil Area page for current access, rules, and what is and is not allowed on the site.