Indoor Activities

Exploring the fossil museum is a favorite indoor activity.

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At the Thomas Condon Visitor Center

Layers of Life: Stories of Ancient Oregon: The 20-minute park film is shown on the hour and half hour during the summer months.

The fossil gallery contains hundreds of specimens from a 40 million year span of time, from tiny plant seeds to large rhinoceros skulls.

View the fossil laboratory through a large picture window in the main lobby. There is often someone in the lab working, although sometimes the paleontologists may be in other offices or out in the park looking for more fossils.

Interested in becoming a John Day Fossil Beds Junior Ranger or Junior Paleontologist? Ask a Ranger in person at the front desk for a booklet! Once the activities are completed, a Ranger will swear you in and you'll earn a badge and Junior Ranger stamp.

The junior ranger book cannot be mailed to be worked on outside the park as the visitor center exhibits are necessary for the activities.

 

Cant Ranch in Spring.

NPS Photo

At the Historic Cant Ranch Home and Museum

The Historic Cant Ranch Home and Museum is currently closed to the public. Check our Operating Hours and Seasons page for more information.

Enjoy the exhibits on the ground floor of the Historic Cant Ranch museum, featuring artifacts from some of the Native Americans who inhabited the region, and stories from homesteaders describing early ranch life. Learn about James and Elizabeth Cant's experience immigrating to John Day Basin from Scotland in the early 1900s, raising a family, and living off the land until their deaths in the early 1970s.