August 7, 2009
Dinosaur Sighting: Roadside Tyrannosaurus
Stephen, his dad, and his brother pose in front of a Tyrannosaurus at Thunderbeast Park in a 1958 snapshot.
Today’s submission is a vintage shot submitted by Stephen Sasser of Portland, Oregon.
In 1958 Stephen (on the left), his brother (on the right), and his dad (center) took a drive up Oregon’s State Highway 97 to Thunderbeast Park, and during the trip he stopped to pose with his family in front of the park’s Tyrannosaurus rex. Sadly, Thunderbeast Park was later shut down, and though the dinosaurs and prehistoric mammal statues stayed in place for a while, by 2006 almost all of them were torn down.
Today the location is a chrome shop for truckers, but rumor has it that at least one dinosaur statue still looms over the highway out front. If any of our Oregon readers are feeling adventurous I would love to see what that dinosaur looks like today!
Do you have a photo of a dinosaur in an unexpected place? Send your submission to dinosaursightings@gmail.com and you might see it here!
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
4 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
How tragic. I never new that place was there. The statue in the picture in the link almost looks like Indrichotherium.
6 years ago we were coming down the Oregon coast and had stopped at a similar dinosaur park. I can’t remember what it was called or where it was, but you can see pictures of them in the link in my name.
[...] this month, reader Stephen Sasser sent us a vintage photo of him and his family at Thunderbeast Park in Oregon. Unfortunately, Thunderbeast Park is now [...]
[...] I’ll let Amanda fill you in …. Then, hop over to the Smithsonian’s website for a 1958 family snapshot of another of the [...]
..um, i’m sorry to say that that photo is not of Thunderbeast park; there were no dinosaurs there, only mammals and birds, and also it didn’t open until 1962, and that photo is apparently dated 1958…I was there in 1963…