Cabazon, California: Claude Bell's Dinosaurs

My family bought the property from the [Claude] Bell Trust about six years ago. We have done quite a bit of development. We own the Denny's Restaurant and there is also a Burger King located on the property. We are hoping to build a full service truck stop and a hotel as soon as we can build a flood wall which is holding up any more development.

An interesting story regarding the maintenance of the dinos: We recently had them painted. It cost a total of one dollar and a case of Dr. Pepper! We worked out a deal with a painting contractor. If we let him paint our dino's he could use them in his advertising brochure. So one dollar and a case of Dr. Pepper later, the dino's look great. Rex has a zig-zag strip down his back and Dinny is painted a color of gray which is pretty real-looking. We are contacting an electrical engineer who is going to put 1,000 watt up-lighting on the dino's so people will see them miles away at night, with red glowing eyes in both.

In our Denny's we pay tribute to the man who built these beauties along with the history and cost of construction. We believe the Bell Family would like knowing their Dad and Grandfather are not forgotten. In a glass enclosure we have several original newspaper articles along with pictures of the dino's while they were under construction.

I was recently in the T-Rex and am thinking we would like to rig him up so he would make the same roar as the T-Rex did in Jurassic Park. The kids will love it. We are also thinking of having a human dummy dangling out of his mouth. Not too scary for the little ones though. Oh yeah, the T-Rex also has a bathroom in him, Pee Wee Herman insisted on one in the T-Rex when he filmed his movie there.

Our family completely enjoyed the two dinosaurs! There were liberties taken with the Pee Wee 's Big Adventure movie, but you have to go there to really see for yourself. The dinosaurs have been painted in a more "realistic" lizard way. There is no internal access to the T-Rex. The outside is plenty of fun anyway! The other dinosaur still has a gift shop in its belly and a view into how it was made! Fast food restaurants have begun to spring up around the dinosaurs. The day we were there, the tourists were plenty including a bus of marines from 29 Palms military base. We would say these dinosaurs are still worth a stop!