The Best Things to Do in Glen Rose, Texas

This is the reason Glen Rose is on the map. Roughly 1,587 acres along the Paluxy River, with trackways left about 113 million years ago in what was then a shallow coastal mudflat. The three toed theropod prints are attributed to Acrocanthosaurus and the wide round sauropod prints to Sauroposeidon proteles, and they sit in the open riverbed rather than behind glass. The National Park Service designated the park a National Natural Landmark in 1968.

The two life size fiberglass dinosaurs near the entrance are a genuine artifact in their own right. A 19 foot Tyrannosaurus rex and a Brontosaurus, sculpted by Louis Paul Jonas for Sinclair Dinoland at the 1964 and 1965 New York World's Fair, ended up here after the fair closed.

An 1,800 acre conservation center you tour by driving the Gosdin Scenic Drive, 7.2 miles of gravel and pavement through open range where more than 1,100 animals across some 50 species move in their own herds. Giraffes, rhinos, cheetahs and wolves are all here, and the hoofstock come to the car because feeding from the vehicle is part of the visit.

This is not a drive through novelty park bolted onto a gift shop. Fossil Rim runs breeding programs for threatened species, and the behind the scenes and guided tours are where you actually learn what that involves. The Children's Animal Center keeps its own hours, 10 am to 4:30 pm.

John Cormack of San Antonio designed the 1893 courthouse in native limestone in the Romanesque Revival style, on the site of an earlier stone courthouse that burned that same year and took most of the county's early records with it. A tornado in 1902 damaged the roof and clock tower, and what you see now is the form they took afterward. It is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and a State Antiquities Landmark, and the Glen Rose Downtown Historic District went on the National Register on September 30, 2014.

The square around it is small and still independent. Storiebook Cafe, Pie Peddlers, Hammond's BBQ, The Green Pickle and Riverhouse Grill are all within a couple of blocks, alongside a handful of shops and galleries. Plan to eat here.

A small city park on the bank of the Paluxy where dozens of limestone boulders, some a couple of feet high and some over ten, are scattered across the riverbed and the field beside it. Kids climb them, adults sit on them, and the water between them is usually shallow enough to wade without thinking about it.

It costs nothing, it has parking, and it is two blocks from the courthouse, which makes it the easiest stop on this list to fit in around everything else.

Twenty acres of shaded trail with over 150 full size dinosaur models standing among the trees, plus a fossil dig and a gem panning sluice for children. It is frankly a different proposition from the state park next door, which is science you have to hunt for in a riverbed. This is the version small children immediately understand.

The pairing is the point. Do the tracks in the morning while it is cool and the models in the afternoon, and the two reinforce each other rather than competing.

A volunteer run local museum on the square covering Somervell County from the fossil record through Native American occupation to farm and ranch life, including the tools people actually worked with. Admission is free and they ask for a donation.

It is the counterweight to the dinosaur attractions west of town. Glen Rose has a hundred and fifty years of ordinary human history too, and this is the only place that lays it out in one room.

Charles Barnard began building this mill on the Paluxy in 1860, first water powered and later a steam powered burr mill, and the settlement that formed around it became Glen Rose. It is one of the oldest buildings still standing in town and a Texas Historic Landmark.

The Somervell History Foundation owns it and runs it as an art museum, with a collection that includes work by the Mexican artist Feliciano Bejar alongside Western painting, bronzes and local artifacts. The building is as much of the visit as the art in it.

Two full 18 hole layouts, both par 72 and both over 7,000 yards from the tips. Apache Links opened in 1992, designed by Jeff Brauer and John Colligan, and Comanche Lakes followed in 2001 from Colligan. Having two championship length courses at a town of a few thousand people is genuinely unusual.

The course's own materials cite a four and a half star Golf Digest rating and Dallas Morning News rankings placing its layouts among the top municipal courses in Texas. We have not independently verified those rankings, and we are attributing them rather than repeating them as fact.

Oakdale opened on May 1, 1925 and has been hosting music ever since. Cabins, RV and tent sites, an outdoor stage and a 330,000 gallon swimming pool sit on the grounds. The park has run spring and fall bluegrass jamborees since 1972, and a 1982 Texas Senate resolution credited those festivals with making Glen Rose the bluegrass capital of Texas.

The 2026 fall festival is scheduled for September 24 through 27, and the park's own festival page bills Rhonda Vincent as the headliner. The Lone Star State Dulcimer Festival has run here on Mother's Day weekend since 1982, and a fall woodcarving show since 1987.

Two 18 hole courses, Carnivore Valley and Pterodactyl Ridge, plus an 18 hole par 2 putting course called MicroRaptor, all designed by JB Rappold across cedar hills with two ponds, a creek and real elevation change. Twenty dollars plays all three all day. A season pass is 100 dollars and primitive camping on site is 10 dollars a night.

Note the location honestly. The mailing address is Walnut Springs, not Glen Rose, about ten miles south on US 67 and then FM 203. We are listing it because it is the best thing of its kind within a short drive, not because it is in town.