Just a short drive from the national monument of the same name, this small town doesn’t have much to offer. There are several gas stations, a liquor store and a small motel along the two main roads, Brontosaurus Boulevard and Stegosaurus Highway.
But this community of about 315 people and its four marijuana dispensaries (one store for every 79 residents) is a serious contender for the title of Colorado’s marijuana capital.
Dinosaur Town is nestled in the northwest corner of the state, just a five-minute drive from the Utah line and a few hours from Wyoming, both states that ban recreational marijuana.
Dinosaur is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 40, known as Brontosaurus Parkway, and Colorado Highway 64, known as Stegosaurus Highway. The intersection has long been a stop for truckers to refuel and fill their bellies. But until weeds make their way into town, there’s little to support the local economy.
It’s a classic story of a frontier town that thrives on state-by-state laws, and how arbitrary lines drawn in a desolate landscape drive economic patterns. Coloradans from Dinosaur cross the border to buy groceries and health care. Utahns come to Dinosaur for lottery tickets, booze and marijuana.
The four marijuana stores opened after a 2016 ballot measure passed, changing the fortunes of a town that had repeatedly failed in other commodities before finally hitting the jackpot in marijuana.
“You’d be surprised how much money there is here,” said Jim Evans, the town’s treasurer. “Money has been flowing out of our ears.”
Lando Blakley, who has lived in Dinosaur for most of his life, opened Dino Dispensary, the town’s third retail store, in 2018. He estimates that 95 percent of his business comes from out-of-state customers, some from as far away as the Northern Dakotas.
“Right now, cannabis is the lifeblood of the dinosaurs,” he said.
Utah has legalized medical marijuana, but the restrictions are tight and there are few places to buy it. As a result, patients may need to spend hours traveling to a point of sale in Salt Lake City or Ogden to find an in-state provider. But for those who live in Vernal or other eastern towns, Dinosaur is the closest place to purchase marijuana in person.
“If someone has to go to a Salt Lake City dispensary in the winter, they’re not going to do it,” said Michael, 37, who like most of the pot shop customers interviewed by KFF Health News declined to identify himself after purchasing marijuana at one of the stores. surname. “Why risk your life by driving 300 miles when you can go 30 miles?”
It’s illegal to bring marijuana across the border into Utah, but multiple customers said they’ve never had a problem. However, a traffic stop for other reasons may have more serious consequences if police find marijuana in the vehicle.
Utah residents Jackson and Chelsea ordered marijuana online from Rocky Mountain Cannabis, located at 420 E. Brontosaurus Blvd. (420 is short for marijuana) and drove across the state line to pick it up.
“Everyone in Utah goes to get a green card and then comes here to get marijuana,” Jackson said.
The cards are carried by people enrolled in Utah’s medical marijuana program – about 70,000 of the state’s 3.4 million residents – to provide them with cover if they are pulled over. Other customers say it’s not worth the hassle of applying for a card and paying the $15 annual fee when Colorado doesn’t require the paperwork.
There are at least two other towns in Colorado that rival Dinosaur Town in the number of marijuana retail stores per capita.The city of Moffat in south-central Colorado has 4 marijuana stores, while the town and its surrounding areas only have a population of 818 because of its huge marijuana reserves growth management.
Sedgwick is another border town that thrives on marijuana, with three stores and a population of 172. The town is located in the northeastern corner of the state, less than 10 minutes from Nebraska, where marijuana is illegal for both medical and recreational use.
Some border towns have chosen not to allow cannabis shops, such as Rangely, where residents now travel 18 miles to Dinosaur to buy marijuana.
Dinosaur’s four stores, clustered on the east side of town just off Highway 40, are nearly the only locations that meet town regulations to be at least 1,000 feet from schools. Most outlets want to be located along highways to attract passing customers. Some people can easily walk to all four stores, while some do so just to avoid the state’s 1-ounce daily purchase limit.
To say that cannabis has changed the face of towns would be an exaggeration. It remains a sleepy town with nothing else to drive its economy. Even though the cannabis trade is booming, there still appear to be more businesses closed than open.
In fact, the town isn’t quite sure what to do with all the money it collects. Its annual budget once was $100,000 or less, but it now makes that much each month from marijuana revenue alone.
In 2021, the town collected approximately $1.4 million in marijuana-related taxes and licensing fees.
When marijuana sales were first approved, the town imposed a 5% tax that flowed into its general revenue fund. Residents voted to impose an additional 5% tax on infrastructure projects. It collects licensing fees from retail stores and marijuana cultivation operations and receives a portion of marijuana revenue collected by the state.
The money allowed the town to build new cesspools, repaint the inside of the tanks and add new residential areas, as well as pave roads, sewers and water systems. The town is undergoing beautification projects, planting trees and flowers, and renovating a former school building into a community recreation center. The town, which previously relied on the county sheriff for enforcement and long response times, has hired three of its own law enforcement officers.
Last year, the town revived its annual festival for the first time in decades, now called the Dinosaur Stone Age Stampede, with food, games and music.
But most of the marijuana tax revenue goes toward savings. Evans said the town’s coffers are expected to have about $3.5 million by the end of the year, and the “dinosaur” will earn about $230,000 a year in interest alone.
Being a cannabis hotspot isn’t something you can take for granted. When the town council first considered allowing retail shops, a heated debate ensued. Town leaders ultimately decided to let residents choose at a ballot. An initial ballot measure failed in 2010.
By 2016, residents’ perceptions had changed as they saw other border towns in Colorado booming while theirs was quickly turning into… well, a dinosaur.
“People are seeing that towns (with legalization) are booming,” said Mayor Richard Blakley, 70, the father of Dinosaur dispensary owner Lando Blakley. “And there’s no real increase in bad crime or anything like that.”
The settlement of Dinosaur was originally called Baxter Flats, but was established as a town in 1947 and named Artesia in honor of the artesian wells in the surrounding hills. In 1966, the National Park Service told local leaders that if they changed the name to “Dinosaur,” the town would prosper from its connection to the national monument known for its prehistoric fossils and petroglyphs.
Residents agreed and renamed their homes and streets. But prosperity never followed, in part because there are few dinosaur fossils on the Colorado side of the national monument. It is primarily a display of geology.
“People come in and ask, ‘Where is the museum? Where are the skeletons?'” Evans said.Aside from a few scientifically questionable dinosaur sculptures, there are no Tyrannosaurus rex or StegosaurusNo Raptor or Allosaurus.
As national park rangers say, Utah has the bones, Colorado has the rocks—or, as people on the Utah side of the border say, rocks.
“We have a great reputation,” Evans said. “When you talk about the dinosaurs in Utah, people say, ‘Yeah, they were crazy and stuff like that.'”
The mayor said the town has seen few negative effects of allowing marijuana use, with some being unprepared for its medicinal effects and feeling sick as a result. The town is growing. The number of residents in the area dropped to 243 in the 2020 census and has since risen to about 315, Blakeley said. Many people have also purchased vacant land to take advantage of relatively cheap real estate costs, making it difficult to find land in the city.
Blakely hopes economic growth will bring grocery stores. Residents can drive 40 minutes to Vernal, Utah, or two hours to Grand Junction to store food or receive medical care. Children started attending Rangeley after the Dinosaur School closed years ago. An urgent care clinic opened across from City Hall a few years ago, but it didn’t take off.
Even if Dinosaur continues to grow, it won’t add more cannabis stores. The town council limits available licenses to four. And these four stores are now the essence of Dinosaur.
“Otherwise,” Treasurer Evans said, “it’s a sad town.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of KFF’s core operating programs – an independent source of health policy research, polling and news.Learn more about Cave.
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