Marblehead, Ohio: Prehistoric Forest and Mystery Hill - Closed

If you haven't seen this and would like to, you better hurry. It's closing at the end of the season.

Adjacent to Mystery Hill is the stunning Prehistoric Forest. And by "stunning" I mean "ludicrous." As a boy the Prehistoric Forest used to be the main attraction, with Mystery Hill (yes, optical illusions, but yes, still a blast) taking a distant second. Mothers would pile their rowdy kids into an amusement-park-style tram, which would then set off into the forest. Along the way the tram would encounter larger-than-life papier-mache sculptures of historically accurate dinosaurs...and other oddities like a 10-foot tall parrot and an 8-foot praying mantis. The kids would reach below their seats and find toy M16 replicas to "shoot" the "dinosaurs." The tram ride was discontinued at some point between 1985 and 1998, but you can still visit and wander around the forest yourself. The proprieters have put forth a token effort to make the visit educational, but really, what can you say about a 10-foot-tall parrot?

Natural Cedar Forest with large dinosaur sculptures, an "active volcano" and a "Mystery Hill" with water running uphill and other gravity defying sites.