Cost $300,000 (Dinny) Phone +1 951-922-8700 | Country United States Structural engineer Gerald Hufstetler | |
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Construction started 1964 (Dinny) / 1981 (Mr. Rex) Completed 1975 (Dinny) / 1986 (Mr. Rex) Address 50770 Seminole Dr, Cabazon, CA 92230, USA Hours Open today · 10AM–4:30PMSunday10AM–4:30PMMonday10AM–4:30PMTuesday10AM–4:30PMWednesday10AM–4:30PMThursday10AM–4:30PMFriday10AM–4:30PMSaturday10AM–4:30PM Similar Palm Springs Aerial Tra, Living Desert Zoo and Gard, Dinosaur Museum, The Fabulous Palm Spri, Salvation Mountain Profiles | ||
Cabazon dinosaurs
Cabazon Dinosaurs, also referred to as Claude Bell's Dinosaurs, are enormous, sculptured roadside attractions located in Cabazon, California, and visible to the immediate north of Interstate 10. The site features Dinny the Dinosaur, a 150-ton building shaped like a larger-than-life-sized Brontosaurus, and Mr. Rex, a 100-ton Tyrannosaurus rex structure. Dinny (pronounced "Dine-ee") and Mr. Rex are at the Cabazon exit of Interstate 10 in California, a short distance west of Palm Springs behind the permanently closed Wheel Inn Restaurant on Seminole Drive in San Gorgonio Pass.
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History
The creation of the Cabazon dinosaurs began in the 1960s by Knott's Berry Farm sculptor and portrait artist Claude K. Bell (1897–1988) to attract customers to his Wheel Inn Restaurant, which opened in 1958 and closed in 2013. Dinny, the first of the Cabazon dinosaurs, was started in 1964 and created over a span of eleven years. Bell created Dinny out of spare material salvaged from the construction of nearby Interstate 10 at a cost of $300,000. The biomorphic building that was to become Dinny was first erected as steel framework over which an expanded metal grid was formed in the shape of a dinosaur. All of it was then covered with coats of shotcrete (spray concrete). Bell was quoted in 1970 as saying the 45-foot (14 m) high, 150-foot (46 m) long Dinny was "the first dinosaur in history, so far as I know, to be used as a building." His original vision for Dinny was for the dinosaur's eyes to glow and mouth to spit fire at night, predicting, "It'll scare the dickens out of a lot of people driving up over the pass." These two features, however, were not added.
A second dinosaur, Mr. Rex, was constructed near Dinny in 1981. Originally, a giant slide was installed in Rex's tail; it was later filled in with concrete making the slide unusable. A third woolly mammoth sculpture and a prehistoric garden were drafted, but never completed due to Bell's death in 1988.
Creationist museum
Following the sale of the property by Bell's surviving family in the mid-1990s, Cabazon Family Partnership and MKA Cabazon Partnership of Costa Mesa, California became the new owners of the roadside attraction. The partnership obtained approval for an expansion of the Cabazon dinosaur site in 1996 with the land-use approvals including restaurants, a museum, and gift shop, and a 60-room motel at the Main Street exit in Cabazon. Orange County developer and MKA partner Gary Kanter said the original vision has been for MKA to transform the area into a children's science and museum exhibit.
Currently located inside Dinny is a gift store and museum promoting creationism with some of the toy dinosaurs in the shop sold under the label "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution." The current ownership has expressed a Young Earth creationist belief that most dinosaurs were created on Earth about 6,000 years ago – the same day as Adam and Eve. In stark contrast to that belief are Bell's painted frescoes and sculptures inside Dinny, depicting a naturalist and evolutionary viewpoint. Bell's paintings include representations of Cro-Magnon man (labeled "Cro-Magnon Man 30,000 [years ago]") and Java Man (labeled "Java Man 400,000"). Bell's historic displays now exist alongside information detailing the creationist viewpoint of the earth and man's origins.
The Cabazon Dinosaurs attraction also features an open-air museum with fiberglass and robotic dinosaurs. Other activities at the site include a sand pit where visitors can experience a "dino dig" as well as a gemstone and fossil-panning sluice. Pastor Robert Darwin Chiles, assisting Kanter in turning the exhibit into a non-denominational church, has been quoted as to his belief of why children are drawn to the dinosaur attraction, "There's something in their DNA that knows man walked with these creatures on Earth." Chiles and Kanter plan to promote their views of creationism at the attraction based on their interpretation of the Book of Genesis.