Prehistoric Park
by Allan Tooley
I went down to Prehistoric Park the other day to take some photos. I wish the light were better, but that’s springtime in Montana.
Prehistoric Park was founded in 1994 by George Mayte. He was hoping, I suppose, to cash in on Jurassic Park fever, since that movie had debuted in the summer of 1993. Fossil hunting and other dinosaur-related industries saw an uptick after the movie came out, so I imagine it seemed like a good idea at the time. Like a lot of folks who’ve come to McKinley over the past 100+ years, he had high hopes and low funding. The park never took off like he wanted, and phases 2 and 3, which included amusement-park-type attractions, stayed looking good on paper. Mayte sold out to a couple of local developers in 2000, and they haven’t done much except keep what’s there in good shape. That’s fine by me; we ended up with a nice place to walk around on a spring day, with fairly impressive paleo-statuary. Here are some photos:
What are their hours? “Fairly impressive” is an understatement! This statuary is better than the stuff in the Smithsonian. It should be in the Montana tourism packets!