Building Built of Dinosaur Bones

Medicine Bow, Wyoming

The walls of this starter home were built out of 5,796 mortared-together dinosaur bones, which were dug out of a nearby ridge known as Como Bluff. The Boylan family -- Thomas, wife Grace, and son Edward -- completed the building in 1933, as a way to draw attention to their gas station. Thomas Boylan said that he designed it to be roughly the size of a giant Diplodocus.

Ethel Nash greets us at the Fossil Cabin, 1991.

It was dubbed "Oldest Cabin in the World" in 1938 by Robert Ripley, and an exterior sign still reads, "Believe It Or Not." Another sign reads, "Fossil Cabin." Boylan advertised his creation on postcards as, "the building that used to walk."

The Boylans sold their unique home/attraction to the Fultz family in 1973, who in turn sold it to Mike Lewis. When we visited in 1991, manager Ethel Nash, 83, allowed us in after paying the dollar admission. There were rock and dinosaur and sea life fossil displays, some for sale.

Ethel is gone now, and the house is closed until a new manager can be found. It still serves as a decent photo op.

According to the National Register of Historic Places, a man from North Carolina offered to buy the cabin and move all 102,116 pounds of it to his home state. This was vigorously refuted by the Nash family, which hopes to relocate the cabin to nearby Medicine Bow when they can raise the estimated moving costs of $50,000.