Dino Museum Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town

Cave City, Kentucky - Normally, in my Road Les Traveled series, I would take the time to "wax poetic" about the bucolic charms and quaint atmosphere of a small community nestled like some undiscovered jewel among the rolling blue-green hills centrally located in the nation's most famous Commonwealth. But, really....there's just not much going on in downtown Cave City, Kentucky.

Ah, but just miles up the road....across busy Highway 65 North....mystery and excitement ominously lurk in the tall grass and above the trees. As the towering 40-foot tall 35-hundred pound frame of a Tyranosaurus Rex silently, but menacingly, beckons to thousands of visitors a year. There's plenty to be found if you dare to enter the confines of "DINOSAUR WORLD!"

As the museum's marketing director, Nicole Randall, happily observes, "Hey, everybody loves dinosaurs. Starting really little to coming up now. Everyone loves dinosaurs."

I was actually looking to build up some suspense here.....But, that's okay. The 15-acre outdoor museum is devoted to entertaining and educating patrons about the "lost world" of those who once "UNDISPUTEDLY RULED THE EARTH!

Sorry, I'm getting carried away again.

Randall continues, "All our programs are education based tied in with the Kentucky Core Content Curriculum. Great field trip opportunities."

Cave City's Dinosaur World, entering it's sixth season of operations, is one of three such museums in the country, including the original outside Tampa and in Glen Rose, Texas, designed, built and owned by Swedish businessman, Christer Svensson. After purchasing a defunct Florida alligator farm, Svennsson got some solid advice about a possible new venture.

Randall explains, "The family has a close friend that's a history curator at the history museum in Europe. And they did a lot of talking about dinosaurs and scientific facts and everything. So, they thought....Hey, he's a very entrepenueural person. Let's work this!

Work it they have....to the tune of luring eighty-thousand-plus visitors a year swarming the museum grounds...to stand in awe of the over 100 dinosaurs strategically placed along a leafy three-quarter mile walkway.

Fortunately, unlike "Jurrasic Park", that fictional human-unfriendly dino-park where everything went haywire, kids coming to Dinosaur World can safely relish in immersing themselves in replicas and factoids.

Randall remembers, "A little two year old walks in and says, "Do you have a Paceosephelisaurus?" He's two! And I looked at his mom and I said, "I bet you don't know what it is?" And he went and got a model of it and brought it over."

So, when you're playing host to little two year old Einsteins, you're compelled to get your facts straight. Which is on display through the work of two in-house artists, whose creations of new dinosaur exhibits is carefully crafted at each Dinosaur World Museum. Whether five foot long or eighty feet high, they're anatomically correct.

Randall described, "We have consulted with scientists and gotten our facts straight and designed all our dinosaurs in size appropriateness. Styrofoam. Then there's a concrete and steel structure. Fiberglass sprayed over them. They're sculpted. Molded. Painted. All right here on the park."

But, as with all great amusement venues, Dinosaur World offers a lot of other things to do besides stare into the face an angry Allosaurus or gape at the sharp teeth of a Dilophosaurus. There's the video theatre. You can lock horns with the big-tusked giants in Mammoth Garden...or participate in the hourly Fossil DIgs....which gives the kids and you a chance to bond in a unique setting.

Even if you didn't manage to find that "dino-treasure" in the sand, there's no way you won't find something dinosaur-ish inside the five-thousand square foot gift shop. It's a veritable department store devoted to the fang-toothed dearly departed.

Who wouldn't want a T-Rex head hanging over the old mantleplace, uh? Yep, Dinosaur World's got it going on.

No wonder Randall concludes, "There's like adventure at every turn."

The kind of excitement which could help to enliven things up a bit in downtown Cave City.