In the late-1950s, reaching what was then Arches National Monument required driving Willow Springs Road, 15 miles northwest of Moab off U.S. 191. While today’s paved entrance from Moab is safe enough for Grandma’s Buick, former park ranger and Desert Solitaire author Ed Abbey described the old Jeep trail into Arches as a little-used dirt track where visitors earn their experience. It has not improved much over the years.

No longer the main route into the park, the Willow Springs turnoff eventually became a popular spot for RV boondockers wanting to overnight for free. These tin-can campers found empty spots on relatively flat ground and parked hither and yon. With no semblance of order, the site looked like a homeless refugee camp.

This former camping area and the surrounding land are now Utahraptor State Park, which celebrated its grand opening in May 2025. Utah’s newest park is named for a species of carnivorous dinosaurs that measured about 20-23 feet in length and weighed around 1,100 pounds. They dispatched prey with jaws lined with serrated teeth and killing claws on each toe. A Utahraptor skeleton stands on display in the park’s visitor center.

Bones of the Utahraptor, along with those of the locally named Moabosaurus, were first discovered at the Dalton Wells Quarry, now part of the new park. One of North America’s largest dinosaur beds, the site has yielded more than 5,500 bones from 10 species. The visitor center displays excavated bones from the quarry, and for a playful comparison there’s a movie-prop claw used in the original Jurassic Park film.

Visitors are welcome to reach the ridge-top quarry site, although getting there requires negotiating a dirt road across a sandy wash. Signs warn that four-wheel-drive is required. Beyond the wash, a well-graded road winds around turquoise-ribbed cliffs, picnic tables set near the base. A half-mile walk up an abandoned roadway with a few hundred feet of elevation gain leads to the quarry. While “quarry” might conjure an image of a pit, this one sits atop a ridge where, other than scraped ground, little visual evidence remains of past excavations.

Beyond dinosaur bones, Utahraptor State Park also preserves the site of the Dalton Wells Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp. Established during the Great Depression, the CCC was a federal work-relief program that began in 1933.

Unemployed, unmarried young men conserved and developed natural resources on federal, state and local lands, receiving food, clothing and shelter plus a monthly wage of $30-$25 of which was sent home to their families. The program ended during World War II, when recruits traded shovels for rifles.

Construction of the Dalton Wells CCC camp began in the summer of 1935, and by late fall the first 200 enrollees had arrived. Campers slept in wooden barracks, 25 men to a unit. Heat came from coal-burning barrel stoves, and each unit shared a single radio.

Over its six-year life, more than 2,000 young men, mostly from eastern states, served six-month stints at Dalton Wells. They built reservoirs, ditches, watering troughs and erosion-control dams. In their free time, enrollees took classes in forestry, auto mechanics, welding, leatherwork, photography, business law and journalism. They played sports, hiked, camped and went to dances and movies in Moab. The camp closed in November 1941.

During World War II, the War Relocation Authority rounded up American citizens of Japanese ancestry and sent them to internment camps such as Manzanar and Tule Lake in California, Heart Mountain in Wyoming and Gila River in Arizona.

Some incarcerated men challenged their detention, arguing that it violated constitutional rights. Federal officials labeled them security risks and transferred them to isolated facilities.

The empty Dalton Wells CCC camp was redesignated the Moab Citizen Isolation Center. Sixteen men accused of inciting violence at Manzanar arrived in January 1943, with several dozen more following over the next few months. In April 1943, the men were relocated to a larger facility on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and the Moab center closed.

 

Today, the wide, half-mile Utahraptor Historic Walking Trail wanders past former bunkhouse sites where towering cottonwoods shade the ground. Little more than concrete floors remain. Interpretive signs tell the story, and a scattering of benches offers places to rest along the way.

As boondockers discovered years ago, the Utahraptor area provides a convenient base for visiting Canyonlands, Dead Horse Point and Moab. Camping is no longer free, but Utahraptor State Park offers two well-designed campgrounds. The Gastonia Campground features 61 paved RV sites that appear designed by someone who actually camps. Each site offers electric and water hookups, with many long pull-through driveways. Restrooms feature hot showers and flush toilets in private rooms that feel like a home bathroom.

For tent campers – or those content with fewer amenities – Fossil Flats Campground offers 27 primitive sites with picnic tables and fire rings (bring your own firewood), plus pit toilets. From either campground, sunset views reflecting off Arches’ red rock and the distant La Sal Mountains can be striking.

Beyond the quarry and CCC site, visitors can explore miles of ATV and mountain biking trails. The Klonzo mountain biking system, managed by the BLM, covers 24 miles and offers varied terrain best suited for intermediate riders. The Sovereign Trail System provides roughly 50 miles of OHV and ATV routes, including slickrock, singletrack and connector roads.

Those craving more dinosaur action can visit the Willow Springs Dinosaur Tracksite just outside the park boundary. These three-toed theropod tracks date back about 165 million years, when animals walked the tidelands of an inland sea. The drive is mostly on graded roads, but the final few hundred yards across Courthouse Wash require high clearance, with four-wheel-drive a helpful option. Drivers in low-clearance vehicles can park near the rim and walk to the tracks.

Adventurous visitors with a street-legal, high-clearance 4x4 can continue along Willow Springs Road all the way to Arches, just as travelers did in the 1950s when Ed Abbey served as a park ranger living in a government trailer at road’s end. Rough and rocky, this is not a route for first-time four-wheelers or anyone convinced a Subaru can go anywhere. Drivers who choose this little-used track will, as Abbey warned, earn their experience.

 

Held at Dalton Wells

In January 1943, sixteen Japanese American men arrived at Dalton Wells under armed guard. The Civilian Conservation Corps camp northwest of Moab had been abandoned for more than a year. Barracks still stood. Concrete foundations remained. The site was remote, far from towns and rail lines, chosen for that reason.

The federal government redesignated the former CCC camp as the Moab Citizen Isolation Center.

The path to Moab began after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, which led to the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. By 1942, more than 120,000 people were confined in camps nationwide. As unrest and protests emerged inside some of those facilities, federal officials created a separate tier of isolation centers to remove men they considered disruptive. Moab opened as one of those sites in January 1943.

The men sent there were not charged with crimes. They had already been incarcerated at larger camps such as Manzanar in California. Their offense, according to federal officials, was dissent – organizing protests, refusing orders, or challenging the legality of their confinement. They were separated from families who remained behind in other camps.

Several dozen more men followed. Life at the Moab center was spare. Guards patrolled the perimeter. Contact with the outside world was limited.

The facility operated for only a few months. In April 1943, the men were transferred to a larger isolation center at Leupp, Arizona, and the Moab site closed.

Today, a half-mile walking trail passes concrete slabs and interpretive signs inside Utahraptor State Park. The Moab Citizen Isolation Center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Moab Museum interprets the site through a small exhibit in town.