See the Dinosaur Bones in Vernal, Utah

In this photo provided by the Utah Office of Tourism, the temporarily closed visitors' center at the...

In this photo provided by the Utah Office of Tourism, the temporarily closed visitors' center at the Dinosaur National Monument is seen, located 20 miles outside of Vernal, UT. The dinosaur 'rock wall' located inside the visitors center contains hundreds of fossils. (AP Photo/Utah Office of Tourism)

(AP)

Local legend has it that cowboys, sheep herders and trappers long knew about the huge fossilized bones that regularly surfaced from the ancient rock underlying Utah's dinosaur country.

But not until steel magnate Andrew Carnegie learned of the bones did Vernal and the surrounding Ashley Valley get the nation's attention 100 years ago. Now Vernal, a Western outpost whose wide streets are lined with energy, mining and agricultural businesses, makes a business of its bones. It's home to a large dinosaur museum and is the base for a National Park Service site at a bone quarry Carnegie established in 1909.

Carnegie's bone quarry is the central dinosaur-related attraction of the area. Located 20 miles outside of Vernal, it's part of Dinosaur National Monument, a 210,000-acre park with rocky and rippled canyonlands stretching into Utah and Colorado.

The park is best known for its visitors' center, with a wall of 1,500 fossilized bones from 11 different types of dinosaurs. In 2005, the visitors center, which sits atop Carnegie's bone quarry, was closed because of severe structural problems.

It's not expected to open again until 2012. But there is still plenty to see. A bed of fossilized bones extends outside the shuttered building. A trail nearby passes fossils naturally eroded from a cliff, including a string of vertebrae, a large femur, and a humurus bone.

The park has a temporary visitors center with fossils and a gift shop featuring giant replica dinosaur bones to take home.

And there is a lot more at the park than bones. Fremont Indians who lived near the park's two rivers about 1,000 years ago left behind both petroglyphs (patterns that are chipped or carved into the rock) and pictographs (drawings or paintings on the rock). They can be seen at remote sites accessible by foot or car.

The park is also spectacular in itself, a rolling bed of multicolored rock cliffs and formations showing the movement of the earth over hundreds of millions of years.