During your visit to this Glendive, Montana attraction, visit the Makoshika State Park Visitor Center to orient yourself with the Park. Exhibits feature paleontological and archeological insight into Makoshika State Park. Impressive views of Makoshika State Park from the Visitor Center offer a look at the Park’s nature and wildlife and present unique photo opportunities.
Makoshika State Park Visitor Center
Opened to the public in the 1990s, the Makoshika State Park Visitor Center features a video presentation that will orient you with Makoshika State Park. A number of exhibits within the Visitor Center interpret the site’s geologic, fossil and prehistoric features. A complete Triceratops horridus skull, among the ten different dinosaur species discovered in Makoshika State Park, as well as rare artifacts left behind by ancient peoples can be seen on display.
Nature and Wildlife in Makoshika State Park
If you wish to enjoy the nature and wildlife at Makoshika, you needn’t look far. Makoshika State Park offers the opportunity to identify trees, flowers and other plants. There are around 150 plant species in the Park, including different kinds of wildflowers as well as Rocky Mountain juniper, rabbitbrush, sagebrush, yucca, cottonwood, willows and pines. Teeming with wildlife, the Park is home to mule deer, coyote, fox, mountain lions, bighorn sheep and other animals. A number of observation areas are ideal if you want to discover the different species of birds that soar through the park. Among the 40 bird species are: turkey vultures, golden eagles, American kestrels, prairie falcon, upland sandpiper, long-billed curlew, great horned owl, horned lark, pinion jay, western tanager and Sprague’s pipit.
Photo Opportunities
Makoshika State Park’s surrounding landscape presents unique photo opportunities. Capture the gray ridges of hardened sand that jut from the earth, boulders that balance on weather-weakened perches and orbs of stone, half buried, that stare upward at the vast, eastern Montana sky. For much of the year sagebrush, Rocky Mountain junipers and ponderosa pines provide spots of color in this otherwise buff world, though the greenery that splashes the hills and coulees and wildflowers that dot the landscape in the spring and summer will bring your photos to life.
Be sure to spend time in the Gift Shop, housed in the Makoshika State Park Visitor Center. Gifts, keepsakes and educational materials related to Makoshika State Park and Montana are available to purchase.
Travel Tips
- The Makoshika State Park Visitor Center is ADA compliant.
- Park maps and informative brochures about Makoshika State Park and other Montana State Parks and regional attractions are available in the Visitor Center.