Oregon's Two Dinosaur Parks Much Safer Than Movie Version -- Attractions Profit From Growing Awe With Dinosaur Age

PORTLAND - Oregon is home to two dinosaur parks - Prehistoric Gardens and Thunderbeast Park - but unlike "Jurassic Park" in the new movie of the same name, their attractions are safely stationary.

The 31-ton brachiosaurus at Prehistoric Gardens near Port Orford will never chase the patrons. Built of layered concrete and 10-steel I-beams, this behemoth is immovable.

"He's not going anywhere," E.V. Nelson, owner of Prehistoric Gardens, said of his rooted reptilian replica. "You're not going to move that boy."

The dinosaur is lightweight compared to the 85-ton original, but in all other respects is authentic, Nelson said.

Except, maybe, the color - a sort of green-gray.

"I had a woman come here once who was very indignant about the colors of the dinosaurs," Nelson said. "She said, `On whose authority did you paint the colors on the dinosaurs?' I said, `On the best authority there is. That's me. I'm the guy with the can of paint.' "

Nelson, 86, said he selected his 70-acre park site along U.S. Highway 101 in 1951 because the deep ferns and mosses are as they should be in a prehistoric garden. The park features 18 dinosaur replicas.

He got interested in dinosaurs when he read about them in National Geographic magazine as a boy in Minnesota, he said.

"It always fascinated me, the stories of the great reptiles," he said.

Ron Tschetter manages Thunderbeast Park in Chiloquin, Ore. It features replicas of 12 dinosaurs that once roamed Oregon. The park was built in 1962 by Tschetter's stepfather, Bernard Howser, "to show what has been found in Oregon."

"We have a mammoth tooth and a brontosaurus bone," Tschetter said. "There weren't that many remains found because this whole area was covered by a 20-foot-deep layer of lava pumice from the explosion of Mount Mazama."

Tschetter said he believes there has been a renewed interest in dinosaurs in the past few years. And, he said, the movie is helping.

"My stepfather had a paleontologist from the University of Oregon and one from the University of Washington supervising a contractor who built the animals," Tschetter said. "The frameworks were all built to scale, and then they supervised a sculptor who shaped the muscles on the animals.

"It's all pretty authentic," he said.

Except these dinosaurs don't move.