Formerly known as The Land of Kong, Dinosaur World bills itself as the "World's Largest Dinosaur Park." What you get for the price of admission are 65-70 acres of rolling wildflower meadows (wildflowers being a seasonal thing), a private lake you can fish in (no license required), and a hundred or so cement figures of prehistoric beasts. It's a drive-through park (speed limit 5mph), but the whole course is just a mile or so. Barely a stroll, really. I've visited twice this year and walked through both times.

Some of the oldest sculptures in the park were designed by and construction supervised by Emmett Sullivan, who was the sculptor of the nearby Christ of the Ozarks. Leo Case also told me that some of his own work is included in the park's collection.

Don't expect scientific accuracy on the order of Dinamation^(tm) animatronics. That's not really the point of this whimsical attraction. (The Democrat/Gazette reported last month that one dissatisfied customer demanded his money back complaining that "the dinosaurs are fake.") Rather consider the park to be filled with folk art based on dinosaurs or old dinosaur movies. Take the kids, take a picnic lunch and bliss out in this surreal Ozark garden meadow.

The centerpiece of Dinosaur World is a 65-foot-tall fiberglass Kong, who holds a life-sized Fay Wray in his right hand. That's Kong on the left, viewed from a hillside on the opposite side of the park. Just near the middle of the same photo, you can barely see it, is a life-sized prehistoric bison being attacked by a team of Neanderthals. That should give you some idea of the scale.

I spoke briefly with the attendant at the gift shop about the attraction, asking the usual dull questions about seasonality, upkeep and so on. She mentioned that once upon a time, all the dinos in the park were painted in earth tones because that's what had been suggested in artist's conceptions. More recent research indicated that some dinosaurs, like birds, had very highly developed optic lobes in their brains and likely could see color. And if they could see color, they, like birds, would certainly use color and therefore would be colorful.

On the left is an example of what we mean by colorful. This new research was a great help to Dinosaur World. Nowadays when it comes time to paint the dinos, they don't have to limit themselves to greys and browns. They can buy whatever is on sale.

Even though these are fanciful interpretations of dinosaurs, some effort has been made to base them in fact, and even if you happen to notice the T-rex's knees bend the wrong way, bear in mind that it still represents an "actual size" animal from our planet's past.

Find Dinosaur World on Highway 187 north of Eureka Springs near Beaver Dam.

Here's a link to a related site.

RTJ--9/2/99