Claude Bell's Dinosaurs

Cabazon, California

From the interstate highway the uncommon view of two giant dinosaurs, on an arid plain surrounded by mountains, is an irresistible magnet. But tourists are not the only ones compelled to stop. Well within L.A.'s convenient day-drive sphere, the Cabazon dinos became media darlings in the 1980s, appearing in everything from Coke commercials to MTV videos to the film Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

They were built by Claude Bell, who ran the adjacent Wheel Inn on I-10. Claude, a former amusement park statue designer, took eleven years to build Dinny, a 150-foot-long apatosaurus and arguably the largest dinosaur in America. To cut costs, he scavenged rebar and cement from the construction of the freeway. A small museum in Dinny's belly still sells souvenirs. Claude's admission sign promised speedier work on the rest of the dinosaur family he planned.

Claude's next project, a giant Tyrannosaurus with a slide down its tail, was nearing completion when Claude died, age 91, in 1988. More sculptures were on the drawing board, including a Woolly Mammoth. The Tyrannosaurus -- known as "Mr. Rex" -- was never completed and, according to the museum manager in Dinny's belly, "it never will be."

In 2005 Gary Kanter, an Orange County developer, began working with Pastor Robert Darwin Chiles to use the dinosaurs of Cabazon as a platform for their Creationist views. That ended after about ten years. The current owners like to repaint the dinosaurs several times a year in nontraditional dinosaur colors -- but, then, no one really knows what colors dinosaurs were anyway.

1985: Claude Bell's dinosaur and Wheel Inn restaurant.

The Wheel Inn, owned by Karel and Marie Kothera since 1993, closed in September 2013, and was bulldozed in December 2016.