Tourism and Dinosaurs

A journey through Dinoland promised "A reenactment of life on earth as it was some 60-million to 180-million years ago," with reproduction dinosaurs of all sizes, including the Brontosaurus, "one of the largest land creatures that ever lived.”

The Exciting World of Dinosaurs: Sinclair Dinoland, New York World’s Fair, 1964-65

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“Everything is guaranteed authentic,” declared an article in The Daily News-Telegram of Sulphur Springs, Texas, “except for one detail—color. Both the Ford [13] and Sinclair dinosaurs are colored according to what scientists believe they actually were, but a Jonas spokesman admitted it’s really guesswork.”[14] Questions over accurate coloring did not dampen enthusiasm for the project. Once Jonas’s team completed its work, 30,000 locals showed up to give the larger-than-life sculptures a proper send-off. From Claverack, the dinosaurs floated 125 miles down the Hudson River on barges, arriving in the New York City harbor to equal fanfare in October 1963.[15] The Dinoland sculptures ranged in size, from the 6-foot-long Orintholestes to the 70-foot-long Brontosaurus. Each was carefully installed in a Mesozoic Era-landscape featuring lush greenery, water features, and a raging volcano. Dinoland merged education and entertainment, using Sinclair’s interest in dinosaurs to demonstrate the company’s commitment to scientific research and to create brand loyalty, both motivated in large part by profit. Architecture and culture critics openly questioned the heavy influence of corporate money at the New York World’s Fair, but to the event’s 50-plus million visitors, the memories created outweighed the commercialism.[16]

At Dinoland, men, women, and children transported themselves back in time, marveled at the scale of a pre-human world, and perhaps, even took a small plastic “Bronto” of their own home as a souvenir.[17] Those who visited the fair as children can still recall their excitement watching their mini Bronto take shape:

My most visceral memory, and it is very strong, is that of the Sinclair dinosaur machine, where you put coins in—I think it was 50 cents—and the green goop came down the pipes and was pressed between two halves of a dinosaur mold, through the glass, right in front of you. Then it came out the bottom like in any vending machine, still slightly warm. The green plastic smell was fabulous. I kept the dinosaur for years, mostly hoping to capture that smell, a cross between “new car” and gasoline.
Anne Yeager, 57, Bronxville, NY [18]

Could there have been any better souvenir from a petroleum company?

Fossilized Footprints: Discovery at Glen Rose

In its “Exciting World of Dinosaurs” Dinoland booklet, Sinclair asserted its scientific and industrial aptitude: “Even before dinosaurs lived, petroleum was forming in the earth during the Paleozoic Era some 230-million or more years ago. Today Sinclair geologists never cease to explore the world in search of long-hidden and precious petroleum crudes. Some Sinclair oil wells are drilled 3 miles deep, or more, to tap these ancient reserves.”[19] Only the latest technology was deployed upon extraction: “Today, Sinclair uses ultra-modern refining techniques to refine and transform these age-old crudes into top-quality Sinclair gasolines, Motor Oils, and other Petroleum Products…”[20]

The company also funded scientific research in the field of paleontology, further reinforcing the link between Sinclair Oil and dinosaurs. Excavations in Wyoming and Colorado in 1934 and 1937 received Sinclair money,[21] but it was one such-funded study in the small agricultural community of Glen Rose, Texas, that helped Roland T. Bird capture the discovery of a lifetime. A field explorer for the American Museum of Natural History and assistant to Barnum Brown, Bird travelled the country looking for fossils and bones for the institution. Acting on a tip he received from a clerk selling dinosaur tracks at store in New Mexico, Bird pointed his car east and arrived in Glen Rose in November 1938. Much to his delight, right in front of the courthouse was a perfectly preserved theropod track:

…my eyes caught sight of something that made me want to shout for joy. There, inserted in a bit of masonry not far from the door, was a large, three-toed dinosaur footprint. Its surface had been turned away from me, and I’d thought for an instant it was the usual fossilised [sic] log or stump one sometimes finds exhibited in places where fossils abound. But as I swung the Buick in to the curb it presented in all its outlines a faithful picture of such a track.It was a beauty, and there was no doubt that it was genuine. It was all of twenty inches of footprint perfection, made by a three-toed carnivore in mud which had faithfully preserved every minute detail. The satisfaction of seeing it was worth my extra miles; it clarified the worst half of an embarrassing problem, and gave promise of other things. A slab of such prints alone would be a fine addition to any museum collection. [22]

Bird inquired as to the track’s origin and learned such things were “long taken for granted in the community.” Glen Rose’s tracks date to the Cretaceous Period, 113 million years ago, when roaming dinosaurs left footprints in calcium-rich mud. The mud hardened and preserved the shape of their feet and claws. Layers of dirt and sediment covered up the tracks, which were slowly revealed by area rivers through millennia of erosion. Though the courthouse track had been extracted in 1933, local boy George Adams discovered tracks in a Paluxy River tributary in 1909. In 1917, Ellis Shuler of Southern Methodist University published “Dinosaur Tracks in the Glen Rose Limestone near Glen Rose, Texas,” in The American Journal of Science. Track hunting was a popular recreational activity, but it required some effort. Texan newlyweds Joe and Laurie Sanders road-tripped from New Braunfels to Glen Rose on their 1929 honeymoon, climbing through barbed wire and wading through tall weeds to snap photos of the gigantic fossilized footprints.[23]

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Good Roads for Glen Rose

Glen Rose, county seat of Somervell County forty miles southwest of Fort Worth, is one of the state’s smallest counties at 188 square miles. The area counts two rivers, the Brazos and Paluxy, and three streams among its waterways.[24] Primarily an agricultural community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the town became a health resort in the 1920s thanks to the discovery of artesian mineral wells. Hoping to capitalize on a tourism boom, and in sync with the national Good Roads Movement, the county began to improve its roads and water crossings. Highway 68 received a concrete and steel bridge in 1923. By the time Roland T. Bird arrived, area thoroughfares were “above average” and easily navigable in his trusty Buick.[25]

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