Real 113-million-year-old dinosaur tracks, giant fiberglass dinosaurs from a World’s Fair, and a candy-filled Creature Features event make this Glen Rose park one of the most unique Halloween destinations in Texas.
Dinosaur Valley State Park, 1629 Park Rd. 59, Glen Rose, TX 76043 — Around Halloween 2026
Park hours run 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Admission is free with a Texas State Parks Pass; otherwise standard park entry fees apply. For more information, call the park directly at (254) 897-4588.
There’s celebrating Halloween, and then there’s celebrating Halloween in a place where actual dinosaurs once left their footprints. Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose gives families the chance to do exactly that, combining a Halloween-themed Creature Features event with one of Texas’s most genuinely remarkable natural landmarks.
The park sits about four miles northwest of Glen Rose, spread across 1,750 acres that the state acquired under the State Parks Bond Program back in 1969. Running through the middle of it is the Paluxy River, which exposes three different types of dinosaur tracks dating back roughly 113 million years, a discovery significant enough that the National Park Service designated the entire park a National Natural Landmark.
Based on last year’s format, Creature Features runs as a Halloween-season event where the park’s Friends Group sets up a series of stations highlighting cool animal adaptations, past themes have covered crows, bats, butterflies, raccoons, spiders, and more. Kids move booth to booth collecting candy and small prizes, and costumes are not just welcome, they’re encouraged. The event meets at the Park Store, and organizers recommend bringing water, your best costume, and a spooky spirit. It’s included with regular park admission or a day-use and camping permit, no separate reservation required, though reserving a day-use pass online in advance is a smart move on busy weekends.
The real headline attraction, though, is what’s been sitting in the riverbed for over a hundred million years. The park has two main track sites. The first, simply called the Main Track Site, shows footprints from both dinosaur species known to have walked through the area. The second, nicknamed “The Ballroom,” earns its name from the hundreds of tracks scattered in every direction, almost as if the dinosaurs had been dancing when they left their prints behind.
Those prints belong to two very different animals. Acrocanthosaurus, a fierce predator standing nearly 20 feet tall and weighing up to six tons, left sharp, three-toed tracks as it hunted across the ancient landscape. Sauroposeidon, a massive, long-necked herbivore stretching around 70 feet long and weighing 40 to 44 tons, left tracks so deep they sometimes pressed through several layers of sediment, giving scientists a rare window into how such an enormous creature carried its own weight.
Before you even reach the riverbed, though, two much newer dinosaurs greet you at the park entrance. A 70-foot Apatosaurus and a 45-foot Tyrannosaurus rex, both life-size fiberglass models, stand near the gift shop as one of the park’s most photographed spots. These sculptures actually have their own strange history: they were originally built for Sinclair Oil’s “Dinoland” exhibit at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, designed by the once-famous taxidermist and wildlife sculptor Louis Paul Jonas, before being donated to the park in 1970, where they’ve stood ever since.
Texas even has an official state dinosaur, and it’s tied directly to this park. In 1997, the Texas Legislature named Pleurocoelus the state’s official dinosaur, a 60-foot-long sauropod whose fossilized footprints, dating back 119 to 105 million years, have been found throughout Central and North Texas, including right here in the Paluxy riverbed.
If you’re planning the trip specifically to see the tracks clearly, timing matters. Late summer through early fall tends to be the best window, since that’s when the Paluxy River runs low enough to fully reveal the ancient footprints beneath the surface, which happens to line up perfectly with an October visit built around Halloween.
Whether your family is there for the candy, the costumes, or the simple thrill of standing in a footprint left by a six-ton predator millions of years ago, Dinosaur Valley State Park turns Halloween into something no haunted house or costume party can quite match.
