A drastic departure from the National Park Service tradition of rustic styles is this International Style enclosure for the quarry. The San Francisco architect enclosed dinosaur bones and excavation tools with a butterfly roof and glass curtain walls that take advantage of the natural light. A drum-shaped concrete visitors' center serves as the entry. Accessibility for the disabled has required modifying stairs and ramps, but public spaces retain their original layouts and birch veneer paneling.
The museum complex includes the Douglass Workshop and Laboratory (1920) (NR), a small building, built into the hillside, of coursed rubblestone with a flat dirt roof. It commemorates Earl Douglass, a geologist, paleontologist, and botanist who discovered this rich dinosaur dig in 1908. Douglass excavated some 70,000 pounds of fossils for patron Andrew Carnegie's museum in Pittsburgh before active quarrying ended in 1924.