Before leaving the Black Hills on Saturday we stopped at Dinosaur Park in Rapid City. The pamphlet for Dinosaur Park advertised life-size concrete dinosaur replicas. Now I am no stranger to life-size dinosaur replicas, I have been to several dinosaur park-areas (most notably the excellent Dinosaur World in Kentucky), but I found this one to be quite interesting. The seven dinosaurs were built in 1936 by WPA workers during the Great Depression as a way of beautifying the area and putting Rapid City residents to work. Specifically the Dinosaur Park was built to “perpetuate the facts of history and to acquaint the present generation and others with a fair idea as to the appearance, size, and characteristics of these, our earliest known inhabitants.”
The park is at the highest point in Rapid City, and from the feet of the Brontosaurus you can look out upon the town’s wonders (mostly strip malls). The dinosaurs were all very cartoony; the brochure admitted that “today’s visitors” may be more accustomed to realistic looking dinosaurs in movies and TV. They were really nice though, and since they are made of solid concrete and steel people are allowed to climb all over them. Wandering around the park, I wondered if the giant green statues were stranger or more normal to travelers passing through in the 1930’s.
Anyway, the park was a cool reminder of how many dinosaurs have been found throughout the Black Hills, including everybody’s old friend Sue at the Field Museum. It is always nice to sit back and ponder what life was like in America for the dinosaurs, perhaps captured best by the classic 90’s sitcom, Dinosaurs.
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