The visitor center was closed from 2006 to 2011 due to structural damage from unstable soils.

[6][7] The visitor center was built in part to attract visitors to the little-visited monument, which had been threatened with flooding by the Echo Park Dam, as a means of guarding against renewed reservoir proposals.

[8][9] The visitor center's concept was first expressed in 1916 when George Otis Smith, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, suggested that the specimens be displayed in the northern canyon wall.

Local citizens, including the dinosaur quarry's discoverer Earl Douglass, proposed a skylit shelter for the display.

No funding emerged for the design, but a new wood and corrugated sheet metal shelter was built in 1951, reminiscent of the 1916 proposal.