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The visitors' center at the Western Slope monument has a simpler explanation: "Jurassic Park," the movie.

Hordes of fossil fanatics braved the long drive to Dinosaur National Monument in 1993 when Steven Spielberg's tale of revived raptors hit the big screen. That was, coincidentally, the year Colorado voters put an end to the statewide tourism promotion tax.

Since the movie, Dinosaur is a lonelier place, with 70,000 fewer visitors last year than the 1993 peak, and things might be worse when this year's tally is complete.

But the federal parks people don't follow Colorado officials' lead in blaming the drop on the demise of the tourism tax. Sometimes all they have to do to come up with a reason is to stick a hand out the window, palm up.

"We also see fluctuations from bad weather," said Gail Purifoy, administrator at Dinosaur.

Digging to the truth about tourism in Colorado can be as difficult as unearthing T-rex bones.

Some studies claim the state lost up to one-third of its market share of national overnight tourists after the tourism tax, collected by hotels and other tourism-related businesses, was rejected by voters in 1993. But in 1996 - still without a tourism tax - that same market share went up significantly.

Small dude ranches and Western Slope resorts say their occupancy rates have plummeted directly as a result of no statewide promotion of their assets. The Colorado Ski Index, a combination of skier visits and spending, hit a record high last season.

Convention and visitors groups lament that Colorado has lost the true leisure travelers, the New York office workers who hop on a plane with visions of snow-capped peaks in their heads. But Denver's bullish hotel occupancy rates have hoteliers raising their average room rates under the laws of supply and demand. And the fact that the state has more business travelers than tourists is actually a bonus, since business travelers spend more.

"The data are not going to support that tourism has gone down," said Bob Benton, who compiles hotel occupancy rates statewide for the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report.

"The areas I've looked at, we haven't seen a big decline, but we haven't seen a big increase, either."

Ironically, those who claim tourism has dropped sharply can't solidly prove their case, precisely because the tourism tax expired: Without the $ 11 million a year raised by the tax, there is no pool of money big enough to make a definitive study of Colorado's tourism business.

Eugene Dilbeck, director of the Denver Convention and Visitors Bureau, cites numbers compiled by Canada's Longwoods International, which polls 50,000 Americans each quarter about where they traveled overnight in the previous three months.

Colorado's share of those so-called "overnight pleasure trips" dropped from 2.7 percent in the last year of national ads for Colorado to 1.8 percent in 1994 and 1995.

"That 33 percent drop in market share is a real number," Dilbeck said. "It is impacting the state."

State leaders were so convinced tourism was hurting that the 1997 legislature made a controversial move to use $ 2.1 million from business fees to once again promote Colorado tourism.

But the Longwoods report shows Colorado's market share rebounded in 1996 to 2 percent, at a time when there was still no national advertising for the state.

When asked about Denver's vibrant hotel occupancy rates, Dilbeck said that convention growth has boosted those numbers and that Colorado should still be mourning the loss of the leisure traveler.

Dilbeck acknowledged, however, that business travelers are preferable in some ways because they spend $ 90 a day here compared with the casual tourist's $ 50 a day.

Tucker Hart Adams, an economist who is scouring the state for tourism indicators, is skeptical of the dire reports about Colorado's alleged loss in market share.

"Thirty-three percent is too big a drop for me. Alarm bells go off in my head when I see a drop that size. That strikes me as more of a statistical aberration," she said.

Adams also said she believes that the lack of national advertising has hurt Colorado tourism, if not as dramatically as some have claimed.

"When you talk to motels and restaurants and retail shops outside big resort areas, talk to mom and pop, they are pretty disappointed. It's flat or it's down," Adams said.

"When national tourism reports are up, to see Colorado flat, something is going on. I can't account for it any other way than that we are not out there doing advertising. Pick up a magazine and Utah is there or Arizona is there, but we aren't," Adams added.

Her own numbers, however, tell a mixed story.

The ski index that broke records last year is compiled by Adams. Her survey of airline boardings shows a 4 percent increase this summer over last year. Lodging nights are up 8.2 percent. Gambling is up 6 percent.

What worries Adams is the turnstile count at major attractions like Dinosaur, Rocky Mountain National Park, Mesa Verde and the highway welcome centers.

Her poll of an undisclosed list of major attractions shows attendance is down 2.6 percent so far this year.

Rangers at places like Mesa Verde report significant drops in recent years, but a historical look at their books shows swings both up and down in years that have no correlation to the existence or demise of a tourism tax.

Mesa Verde attendance dropped 7 percent in 1996, but that included a 10-day closure in the crucial month of August due to a fire.

Visits there dropped 22 percent in 1989, despite the tourism tax being in place.

Those who work at the parks mention weather first when it comes to the numbers. At Rocky Mountain National Park, "1994 was our highest on record, after we had a warm winter and a dry spring. In 1995 (when attendance dropped 145,000), we had a real wet spring and snow into June," said Bonnie White, the park's information specialist.

Benton said his lodging survey points to trouble spots in small communities of Colorado that lack a major resort or national park attraction.

That pessimism is echoed by the Colorado Guest and Dude Ranch Association, which tracks occupancy for dozens of operations with a total of 1,000 beds.

Association Director Wright Catlow started keeping records at the time the tourism tax took effect, and ranch occupancy was at about 72 percent of available beds.

As the state began advertising nationally and giving the dude ranches prominent play in the official guidebook, occupancy climbed each year, to 86 percent.

Beginning in 1994, two years after voters declined to extend the tourism tax, visits slid consistently to 75 percent in 1996. The summer of 1997 was up slightly more than 1 percent, after the ranches did their own marketing.

"There's a direct linkage," Catlow said.

"A year ago, for the first time in years, I saw vacancy signs in Estes Park motels in summer," said Phil Olbert, who with his wife, Karen, owns the Lazy H Guest Ranch in Allenspark.

Olbert said that his business is down sharply since 1993, and the drop has made him reconsider owning the ranch.

The problem for those trying to sway public attitudes about promoting Colorado is that each anecdote of losses from individual businesses is countered by the frustrations of Front Range residents who tried to get peak-period reservations at a popular resort or campground.

And since so much travel is based on what's either convenient or fashionable, pinning down a persuasive set of economic numbers is very hard to do, Benton said.

The decision by Western Pacific Airlines, for example, to pull flights out of its former Colorado Springs hub may have a far greater impact on Pikes Peak tourism than any other factor.

"Attractions attendance goes in all directions. If the dollar is cheap in Europe, people go to Europe. There's a lot of other fluctuations besides marketing," Benton said.