Tag Archive for Roadside Attractions

Friday Fun Links: the Weird, Wonderful Worlds of Mark Cline

The ruins of the Enchanted Castle attraction (1986-2001)

Who says the mega theme parks, the Disneyworlds and Sea Worlds and Six Flags, have killed off America’s traditional roadside attractions? Those durable, lovable staples of summer road trips may be ailing, but they aren’t quite dead yet. And if “the poor man’s Walt Disney,” Mark Cline, has any say in the matter, the old-fashioned roadside attraction will never die.

Over this past Memorial Day Weekend, my family and I took a road trip to Natural Bridge, Virginia. Our goals were to see the Virginia Safari Park (very much worth seeing, by the way) and the famous Natural Bridge monument and park, one of the natural wonders of North America. While driving on U.S. Highway 11 toward the center of the town of Natural Bridge, we passed several signs advertising a free attraction called Foamhenge. This sounded like something very much up our alley (aside from being free, which sounded good after the $$ we’d dropped at the safari park). So we put Foamhenge on our agenda for the afternoon, following our visit to the Natural Bridge monument and park.

The ticket takers at the Natural Bridge Park told us Foamhenge was definitely worth seeing, and that the man who had created Foamhenge had also operated a family attraction next to the park called the Haunted Monster Museum, which had burned down the year before (this unfortunate news greatly disappointed the boys and me). Foamhenge, a short drive away, turned out to be fabulous, in a tacky sort of way, a full-sized, accurate reproduction in Styrofoam of the world-famous Stonehenge in England. Reading the signs that adorned the little site, I discovered that the creator of Foamhenge, Mark Cline, had a wonderfully wicked sense of humor. He also appeared to be a talented maker of fiberglass figurines, judging from the impressive Druid priest who “guarded” the installation.

Entrance to Mark Cline’s Enchanted Castle Studio

Also along U.S. Highway 11, we spotted a ramshackle compound called the Enchanted Castle Studio. A wooden wall surrounded most of the compound, but we could see the tops of numerous enticing dinosaur figures inside, as well as the tops of various mythological creatures and heroes rendered in fiberglass. Off to the side of the walled part of the compound lay an abandoned castle-type building and several very weird giant figures, including a massive blue and yellow insect that we took pictures next to.

On the drive home, I promised myself to learn more about this Mark Cline fellow. Little did I know then that I had already seen numerous examples of his work, at Dinosaur Land in White Post, Virginia, and in the parking lot of the Pink Cadillac Diner just outside the entrance to Virginia Safari Park. Nor could I suspect how fascinating the story of his career would be… the story of one of America’s great roadside attraction impresarios. Beset by adversities and setbacks which would have stopped most other entrepreneurs’ careers cold, Mark Cline has gone on and on and on, never ceasing his search for that pot of gold at the end of a fiberglass rainbow.

Mark Cline, born in 1961 (three years older me), and I lived almost parallel childhoods. We both spent our youths filming our own monster movies and building miniature monsters and dinosaurs. The major difference is that Cline ended up going a whole lot farther with his artistic pursuits than I ever did (I got sidetracked into acting, first, and later writing). During his teen years in Waynesboro, Virginia in the 1970s, Cline made his own Super-8 horror movies and helped build sets and props for a local monster movie show. His latex monster creations won awards in local art competitions. He learned the art of sculpting in fiberglass during a job at Red Mill Manufacturing in Lyndhurst, outside Waynesboro, a company which manufactured small resin figurines, including Minutemen and turtles, for souvenir and novelties stores. His mentor at the company showed Cline how to make a mold of his own hand, then sent him home one night with a five gallon bucket of resin to experiment with. In 1982, hoping to achieve his childhood ambition, he attempted to start up his own horror-themed roadside attraction in Virginia Beach, but, without any business expertise or experience, he failed miserably.

However, on his drive home, he ran out of gas in Natural Bridge, Virginia, a small town whose major claim to fame is the privately-owned Natural Bridge monument and park, then surrounded by several downscale roadside attractions. He decided to make a second attempt to start his own business. Later that year, he opened his first version of the Haunted Monster Museum in Natural Bridge, but his attraction was shunned by the operators of the nearby Natural Bridge park, and it closed after three years. He reopened it shortly thereafter, retooled as the Enchanted Castle, and began a more collaborative relationship with the owners of the Natural Bridge park, who began selling tickets to his new attraction at their own well-attended facility. The Enchanted Castle featured a bungee-jumping pig, leprechauns, fairies, a giant-sized Jack-in-the-Beanstalk, plus weirder creations, such as a tremendous tick, a “Holy Cow” (cow with wings), and a 15-foot-tall devil’s face guarding the park’s entrance. In retrospect, given what was to happen a few years later at his small park, perhaps he would have been prudent to skip the devil’s face, which apparently did not sit well with the more religiously minded among his neighbors.

On the grounds of the Enchanted Castle, Cline founded his Enchanted Castle Studio, where he created new fantastical fiberglass creations, not only for his own attraction, but for other businesses, as well. A fortuitous chance meeting with either William Hanna or Joseph Barbera (Kline can’t recall which of the men he talked with) at a trade show resulted in Kline winning a contract to supply ten-foot-tall fiberglass Yogi Bear statues to all 75 of the country’s Jellystone Park Campgrounds. In 1987, Joann Leight, the daughter of the original owner of Dinosaur Land (opened in 1963), hired Cline to create a new group of more up-to-date, dynamic dinosaurs for her roadside attraction near Winchester, Virginia. Mark had visited Dinosaur Land as a boy, and that visit had been one of the primary inspirations for the direction his life’s career would later take.

“‘My father and I were traveling, coming back from Baltimore, and Dinosaur Land [in White Post, Virginia] was closed, but I asked my dad to stop there—I’d been there before—and he said, “OK.” I was probably about 12 years old. We stood there together looking through the fence at these huge dinosaur figures, and I said, “I’m going to make these when I grow up, dad.” And he just said these 11 words to me: “If that’s what you want to do, nothing can stop you.”’”

Cline, in addition to being a businessman and artist, has always been a trickster. April Fools’ Day is one of his favorite holidays. However, one of his theatrical holiday pranks, intended to amuse his neighbors and drum up additional business for his Enchanted Castle attraction in 2001, resulted in a major setback, an apparent arson which nearly ended his career as a roadside impresario.

The boys and I posing with the giant, bloated tick on the grounds of the Enchanted Castle

“A couple of weeks before the blaze, Cline played a prank on the neighborhood by scattering a handful of ‘flying saucers’ and ‘aliens’ along Route 11, the main drag through Rockbridge County. In the spirit of the neighborhood, the saucers were crafted from discarded satellite dishes. In the spirit of a true entrepreneur, they were subtle lures to his ill-fated tourist attraction.

“On April 1, 2001, the stunt and its maestro were revealed (as if there were some doubt) in a story with color photos on the front page of the Roanoke Times. The blaze occurred eight days after the story was published. … Since the October before the fire, Cline says, he had been finding religious tracts tucked under the wiper blades of his pickup truck … On the night of the fire … he went out to his mailbox to find a more ominous tract.

“‘We have prayed for you,’ read the hand-written letter, which also accused Cline of ‘darkness’ and ‘beastly madness.’ The writer warned that ‘the wrath of God is very fierce.’ Included was a burnt-around-the-edges copy of Cline’s photo clipped from the Roanoke paper.

“‘Fire represents God’s judgment,’ the letter closed. ‘Behold, the judge is standing at the door.’

“‘I read this as I was watching the castle burn,’ says Cline. … Cline, who received an insurance settlement for his buildings but not for the contents, readily concedes that he was a suspect. He says that before the flames were fully extinguished, he and his wife were separated and interrogated.

“‘I know who left me the messages,’ says Cline. ‘But there’s no proof they actually set the fire. It could have been oily rags or lightning– I believe in coincidences too.’”

Not a man to be deterred by adversity, a year later, in 2002, when the owners of Natural Bridge park offered Cline a lease on a rundown Victorian mansion on their property, Cline decided to begin anew, and he turned the old mansion into his Haunted Monster Museum & Dark Maze.

The following year, seeking to expand his empire of southwestern Virginia roadside attractions, Cline decided to go bigger. He turned the faded boomtown of Glasgow, Virginia, six miles from Natural Bridge, into “The Town that Time Forgot.” Cline made agreements with the owners of a dozen or so Glasgow merchants to allow him to put one of his life-sized fiberglass dinosaurs on their property, either on their lawn, in their parking lot, or even atop their building. Then he convinced the town government to pay for 50,000 copies of a promotional brochure he had created. The town fathers, initially convinced that Cline’s creations would help put them back on the map, gave a green light to the plan. So on April Fools’ Day, 2003, Glasgow became the dinosaur capitol of southwestern Virginia. However, Cline’s dinos didn’t pull in as many visitors as the Glasgow authorities had hoped for, so a year later, they pulled the plug on Cline’s scheme.

Not to be deterred (and suddenly having a dozen or so life-sized fiberglass dinosaurs that he needed to so something with), Cline moved his dinosaurs to a forested tract of land adjacent to his Professor Cline’s Haunted Monster Museum & Dark Maze, giving visitors two attractions for one admission price. But he went much further than just plopping a bunch of recreated dinosaurs under the trees and behind the bushes. He imagined a whole alternate history scenario for his creations to romp in, combining his love of dinosaurs, his fondness for the old Ray Harryhausen movie The Valley of Gwangi (also a childhood favorite of mine; my best friends and I stayed up late to watch it during my eighth birthday party), and the regional fascination with the Civil War. He called his new attraction Dinosaur Kingdom.

“(V)isitors are asked to imagine themselves in 1863. A family of Virginia paleontologists has accidentally dug a mine shaft into a hidden valley of living dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the Union Army has tagged along, hoping to kidnap the big lizards and use them as ‘weapons of mass destruction’ against the South. What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy. As you enter, a lunging, bellowing T-Rex head lets you know that the dinosaurs are mad — and they only get madder. A big snake has eaten one Yankee, and is about to eat another. An Allosaurus grabs a bluecoat off of his rearing horse while a second soldier futilely tries to lasso the big lizard. Another Yankee crawls up a tree with a stolen egg while the mom dinosaur batters it down.”

The boys and I on our “pilgrimage” to Foamhenge

Perhaps Cline’s most famous, or infamous, creation arrived the following year, landing on the Natural Bridge landscape overnight, once more on Cline’s favorite day of the year, April Fools’ Day. “‘About 15 years ago I walked into a place called Insulated Business Systems where they make these huge 16-foot-tall blocks (of Styrofoam),’ Mark tells us. ‘As soon as I saw them I immediately thought of the idea: “Foamhenge.” It took a while for the opportunity to present itself, of course.’ … It is, Mark points out, the only American Stonehenge that really is an exact replica of the time-worn original. ‘I went to great pains to shape each “stone” to its original shape,’ he tells us, fact-checking his designs and measurements with the man who gives tours of Stonehenge in England. Mark has even consulted a local ‘psychic detective’ named Tom who has advised him on how to position Foamhenge so that it is astronomically correct.”

Cline’s creations have spread beyond the immediate vicinity of the Natural Bridge monument and park. A few miles to the north, near the access road to another local attraction, the Virginia Safari Park, Cline installed a 14 foot-tall statue of King Kong in the parking lot of the Pink Cadillac Diner. He explains this was actually a protest against the local government’s having forced him to take down one of his signs: “I placed it there three years ago after the county made me take down one of my signs that they said was illegal… Since it’s too much of a challenge to regulate ‘art,’ they left King Kong alone. Now many of the supervisors wished they had left my sign alone.”

Cline’s unfortunate history with fire nearly repeated itself shortly before September 11, 2011, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack. A businessman in Waynesboro, Virginia, who had been a high school classmate of Cline’s, arranged for Cline to create a fiberglass memorial to the Twin Towers. However, while the memorial was being installed, a support cable touched a live power line, creating a shower of sparks and a major power outage in Waynesboro. Cline’s creation almost burning down before it was unveiled.

Far worse was yet to come, however. 2012 began auspiciously for Cline; the struggling Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia decided to host an exhibition of Cline’s weirdest figures in February, advertising it as a major retrospective of American folk art. The event was featured in an article in the Wall Street Journal. Investors flew him on a private jet to New Jersey to have him consult on a big job; other art museums contacted him, as well as the producers of a reality TV show. However, just two months later, the centerpieces of his entertainment empire, his Haunted Monster Museum and Dinosaur Kingdom, suffered a devastating fire eerily similar to the fire which had destroyed the Enchanted Castle eleven years earlier.

“A mid-April blaze demolished the Victorian-era mansion that served as the Haunted Monster Museum as well as the centerpiece of a bizzaro place called Dinosaur World where dinos would gobble Union soldiers and where brave visitors could also hunt Bigfoot with a ‘redneck.’ … Although the fiberglass dinos in the woods outside were saved, the Monster Museum was incinerated. The mechanical rats, the ‘Elvis-stein’ monster, and the mighty fiberglass python that seemed to slither in and out of the second-story gable windows all went up in flames late on the afternoon of April 16. … Like the rest of us, Cline says he’s now trying to face the prospect of a summer without his Monster Museum. He’s seen an uptick in contract work, like the 13 men’s room sinks he recently built for the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. A couple of reality show producers have made inquiries about following him around. Cline veers between ‘pissed off’ anger at an unknown arsonist and the peace of knowing that nobody was killed or injured in the fire.”

Cline’s website, Monstersanddinosaurs.com, has announced plans to reopen the Haunted Monster Museum and/or Dinosaur Kingdom “sometime in 2013.” Until that happy day arrives, fans of Cline’s work can still visit Foamhenge, accompany Mark and his wife Sherry on Lexington, Virginia’s Ghost Tour, or see the artist at work at his Enchanted Castle Studio on the grounds of his former attraction, the Enchanted Castle, the remnants of which can still be viewed from U.S. Highway 11. Cline’s work is also on prominent display along the main commercial drag of Virginia Beach, where his creations are a large part of the appeal of such tourist draws as Nightmare Mansion, the 3-D Fun House and Mirror Maze, and Cap’n Cline’s Pirate Ghost Ride (which replaced a long-running funhouse attraction called Professor Cline’s Time Machine).

And, of course, Mark Cline’s dinosaurs can still be enjoyed at the very place where all of his dreams got their start, White Post, Virginia’s Dinosaur Land (I did a three-part post on my family’s trip to Dinosaur Land, chock full of terrific photos of Cline’s dinos).

Dinosaur Land: Imaginary Monsters

Imaginary giant shark, or the actual prehistoric Megalodon? The model maker didn't know himself!

One of the wonderful, weird, and almost dada aspects of Dinosaur Land is that its builders did not limit themselves to actual dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals. They let their imaginations run a bit wild. The first two creatures a visitor encounters when he or she walks out of the gift shop, through a short, cavern-like tunnel and out into the Prehistoric Forest are a 60 foot-long shark and a giant octopus which stretches 70 feet from tentacle tip to tentacle tip. In fact, to continue on into the park, one must walk beneath one of the octopus’s pink tentacles. Now the park’s operators could have identified the big shark as a Megolodon, an actual prehistoric shark which grew up to 52 feet long. They don’t; I get the feeling the big shark was installed up front, where it could be seen from the road, around the time the movie Jaws was a mega summer hit (my feeling was reinforced when the boys and I discovered you could walk into his mouth through his gills and pose between his giant teeth).

Did any octopi actually grow to be seventy feet in diameter? Who knows? They didn't leave any fossils behind!

The octopus? Who knows? There’s the legend of the kraken, of course. And it’s possible that giant octopi did exist at one time, but we likely will never know, because, apart from their beaks, no other parts of their bodies would have fossilized. As cephalopods, they would have left behind no bones for us to find.

"The Deadly Mantis:" 1957 called and wants its giant bug monster back

So I suppose the big shark and the giant octopus are borderline creatures, on the margin between potential scientific fact and imaginative fantasy. Other critters in Dinosaur Land, however, definitely fall into the latter category. There’s the giant king cobra. Actual examples stretch up to 14 feet long. This representation, on the other hand, towers a good 14 feet high. Then there’s the 13 foot-high praying mantis. Unless its breathing apparatus were to be completely different from that of actual insects, a mantis anywhere near this size would be unable to breathe.

But it is a wonderful reminder of one of my all-time favorite Creature Features, the 1957 giant bug movie The Deadly Mantis, starring Craig Stevens and a bunch of other B-listers I never heard of. The film’s memorable climax takes place when the big bug crawls into the Manhattan Tunnel in New York City and the army goes in after it.

Kong says, "Fay Wray? Who needs Fay Wray? These boys look tastier!"

And then there’s the boys’ favorite, and one of the largest statues in the park – King Kong. Kong is the only figure the park’s managers encourages children to climb upon (into his big paw, at least), so he makes for irresistible pictures. Interestingly, all of Kong’s prehistoric playmates from the classic 1933 film are with him at Dinosaur Land. His companions include a Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus, a Stegosaurus, a giant snake, and a Pterodon.

Is this the giant octopus Kong fought in "King Kong vs. Godzilla"?

The only missing creature from the original King Kong is a giant spider (but, to be fair to the park’s designers, the giant spider scene was cut out of King Kong’s original release prints, and was not restored to the movie until nearly fifty years later).

On the other hand, one of Kong’s antagonists from a later film appearance is present, the giant octopus from 1962’s Toho Films monsterfest King Kong vs. Godzilla.

Forget King Cobra... how about "Emperor Cobra?"

One request for the Dinosaur Land folks… my youngest son, Judah, was sorely disappointed that there were no giant turtles in the park. He is a big fan of Gamera (child after my own heart!). The closest thing we could find to a giant turtle was the Ankylosaurus, which looked more like a giant horny toad than a giant turtle.

unnamed colorful beastie menaces the boys

All in all, we loved the place. You could easily take a quick look-through and spend only twenty minutes in the Prehistoric Forest. But you would be denying yourself one of the park’s primary pleasures – an opportunity to quietly and languorously allow your imagination to roam.

a sign you can't miss if you're driving Route 340/522 North

(Go to Part One)
(Go to Part Two)

Dinosaur Land: Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Allosaurus on the prowl


(Go to Part One)

Dinosaur Land has added a number of additional statues since its opening back in 1964. Most of the additions have been carnivores (or herbivores being eaten by carnivores in life-sized dioramas of ancient life and death battles). I’d be curious to find out how many of the newer carnivores were added to the park after the huge success of the film version of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park in 1993, which helped make Velociraptors part of every red-blooded American boy’s fantasy life.

Watch out, Stegosaurus! Oviraptor is about to steal your eggs!

The park certainly suffers from no shortage of meat-eaters now. Newer dinosaurs include a Gigantosaurus, a Dilophosaurus, a Velociraptor (star of the movie), a Megalosaurus, and an additional Tyrannosaurus, this one trying to take down a Titanosaurus. The park also added a few herbivores, including a Styracosaurus and a mother and baby Stegosaurus. (More fantastical additions have included a 60 foot-long shark, a 70 foot-wide octopus, and King Kong, I suppose to keep the 13 foot-tall praying mantis company.)

Boys, don't tick off the Stegosaurus! You wouldn't want to get whacked by that tail!

Oddly, one of the original figures has disappeared, the “cave man” (possibly a homo erectus, to try to judge from an old photo, but more likely a figure from the artist’s imagination). Possibly he was just too anatomically incorrect (but the 70-foot octopus and King Kong have remained?). Or maybe some overly exuberant children tried climbing up his back or yanked on his arms, toppling him over and smashing him beyond repair? I would bet on the latter, given my own children’s behavior (Asher, my middle son, admitted to breaking off one of the giant ground sloth’s claws while hanging on it; I sheepishly handed over the broken finger to one of the staff).

Tylosaurus is a fish out of water--actually, a marine reptile out of water

Dilophosaurus says, "Aww, Mom, just one snack before dinner?"

Pterodon swoops down on the attack!

Gigantosaurus says, "Mmm... tastes like chicken!" Pterodon says, "Shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning!"

Megalosaurus about to enjoy an Apatosaurus steak

Each child that attends Dinosaur Land receives a free copy of a wonderful booklet on the park’s recreations that was originally compiled and printed back when the attraction first opened in 1964 or shortly thereafter (the girl in the miniskirt on the rear cover, standing next to the Tyrannosaurus, makes me think the photos in the booklet might come from a little later, perhaps 1966?). It contains photos of the original 27 statues — dinosaurs, other prehistoric animals, and two oddities, a giant praying mantis and a giant king cobra. Especially eye-popping is to page through this little guide and see how comparatively desolate the park appeared in the mid-1960s compared to its lush foliage today. Back then, all of the trees in the park were saplings, none taller than five feet. Today, forty-five years later, the trees are all fully grown and provide dense shade above most of the animals’ heads. It is also intriguing to see how the paint schemes have been changed over the years on the original animals, such as the Dimetrodon, the Oviraptor, the Pachycephalosaurus, and the Stegosaurus. All of them have become much more colorful since their original unveilings.

Who is "Responsible for accidents," Pachycephalosaurus or Levi?

A 1993 article on Dinosaur Land in the Hampshire Review listed the park’s annual attendance at between 18,000 and 20,000 visitors per year, or an average of 50 visitors per day. That would roughly match the level of attendance I saw during the couple of hours the boys and I explored the park on a Sunday afternoon. About half a dozen families with 3-5 members wandered in while we were there, along with another four or five moms pushing a toddler in a stroller. There were a few ten or fifteen minute stretches during which we were the only guests present. Which was wonderful.

Tyranosaurus vs. Titanosaurus (I know who I'd place my bet on)

Despite the four scenes of carnage and combat (a Gigantosaurus munching down a pterodactyl; a Megalosaurus feasting on an Apatosaurus; a battle between a Titanosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus; and, if memory serves, another Tyrannosaurus facing off against a pair of Triceratopses), the park is exceptionally peaceful and quiet, inviting silent contemplation of the ancient beasts (and the fanciful creatures mixed in). I enjoyed as restful a Sunday afternoon with the boys as any I can remember. That, by itself, was well worth the $17 we spent on admission to the Prehistoric Forest.

(Go to Part Three)

Your kindly blog narrator, one second before his head is bitten off

Dinosaur Land: Not Just Another Roadside Attraction

We're there! We're there!

Ah, roadside attractions… at one time in our national childhood, salvation for parents traveling cross country with their kids, looking desperately for a bathroom break and a pause from choruses of “Are we there yet?” Oases of fun for children stuck all day long in the rear storage hatch of their parents’ station wagon, tired of reading the same comic books over and over again.

hanging out with Triceratops

I grew up in South Florida at pretty much the end of the Golden Age of roadside attractions, just before the mega theme parks closed so many of them down by drawing away their customers (I was born in 1964, and Disney World opened in Orlando in 1971). I still remember Planet Ocean, Stars Hall of Fame Wax Museum, the Fun Fair, the Miami Serpentarium, the Mystery Fun House, Ocean World, Parrot Jungle (now Jungle Island), and Monkey Jungle (still going strong!).

My fondest dream as a kid was a pet Stegosaurus that I could ride to school

I loved dinosaurs as a kid. The only life-sized dinosaur statue anywhere near me was a scrawny Tyrannosaurus mounted in front of the parking lot of a furniture store located, I believe, in South Miami, placed there to make parents with kids pull over and take a look (and then maybe wander into the furniture store). The Miami Museum of Science and Space Transit Planetarium had statues of a giant ground sloth and a sabretoothed tiger, but those were prehistoric mammals, not dinosaurs. Had I known back then that a place such as Dinosaur Land existed, I’m sure I would’ve bugged the dickens out of my mom and dad until they agreed to take me to White Post in rural northwestern Virginia, between Winchester and Front Royal (maybe combining that with a visit to relatives in Charleston, West Virginia, not too far away).

Good thing Psittacosaurus is a plant eater--that beak looks sharp!

Dinosaur Land was built the same year I was born. So it’s about 47 years old. The place doesn’t advertise much; I’ve driven the western stretch of I-66 a dozen times or more and never seen a billboard hawking the place, which is located only seven miles north of the highway, up Route 340/522 North. I stumbled upon a description of the place when I was looking online for weekend activities for my three boys. That was back at the height of the summer. I decided I’d wait for a perfect autumn day and then take my sons. The perfect day arrived this past Sunday, crisp and sunny. Off we went.

Mama Stegosaurus and her baby

Diatryma says, "There's Colonel Sanders! Hide me! Hide me!"

Cheer up, Dimetrodon! It'll be sailing season before you know it!

Dinosaur Land is completely charming. Any Baby Boomer (I came at the tail end of the boom) will be plunged into nostalgia by a visit. You enter the attraction through the gift shop (of course). This isn’t as bad as it sounds, because the gift shop is part of the charm of the place, with a tremendous variety of knick-nacks and tchotches for sale at all price ranges, from leather moccasins to dinosaur masks. As a parent, I was very pleased to find I didn’t have to spend a minimum of five bucks per kid on souvenirs; I could’ve easily spent a bundle (had I heeded my boys’ pleadings), but the shop also sold a huge assortment of rubber insects and small dinosaur figurines from 75 cents to $2.95, so I was able to redirect my childrens’ cravings to more reasonably priced items. Admission to the Prehistoric Forest is also very reasonable at $5 for adults and $4 for children (children two and under enter for free).

Pachycephalosaurus reminds himself, "Next time, I need to buy the anti-psoriasis shampoo!"

Once you exit the gift shop, you walk through a “cavern” to get to the Prehistoric Forest. The approximately three acre park contains 37 creature statues (not just dinosaurs), all either life-sized or larger than life-sized (I’ll explain that in an upcoming post). When the park opened in 1964, it had 26 statues. Since then, the owners have added several dinosaur battles and beefed up their stock of the trendy carnivores. Attached to the multi-room gift shop is a modest ranch house where the original owners once lived. They looked out their windows at Tyrannosaurus, a gigantic praying mantis right out of the 1957 monster movie The Deadly Mantis, and a Mylodon, or giant ground sloth. I wonder if they had kids.

Judah says to Moschops, "I prefer lamb chops!"

The dinosaurs are definitely old-school (except for the most recent additions), modeled upon the classic dinosaur murals that line the walls of the New York Museum of Natural History. Since then, paleontologists have completely revised their theories of how dinosaurs moved and lived, and many dinosaur skeletons in major natural history museums have been remounted to reflect the current view of dinosaurs as swift, active animals, possibly warm-blooded, very different from modern reptiles, more like modern birds. The Dinosaur Land dinosaurs, however, would all be very much at home in the Ray Harryhausen dino epics of the 1950s and 1960s.

Stegosaurus, the armored dinosaur which was my favorite when I was a boy, gets lots of love at Dinosaur Land. There are three of them, one an old-fashioned green gentleman and the other two a more updated mother Stego and baby. I was very pleased to see all of them.

cuddling with the friendly Stegosaurus, my childhood favorite

More photos to come! More dinos and other weird, fantastical creatures! A mystery dinosaur! The giant octopus from King Kong vs. Godzilla! And Kong himself!

(Go to Part Two)