Category: Sights Listing Date: 2014-05-14
Dinosaurs at Dawn
OK, so it was a couple of hours after dawn but we did see dinosaurs at Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, South Dakota.
Dinosaur Park has long been a favorite stop to those vacationing in the Black Hills, particularly those with small children. While not exact duplicates of the originals the size is pretty impressive. The APATOSAURUS: Often called Brontosaurus was a plant eater and weight nearly 30 tons and lived during the late Jurassic era some 145 million years ago. Tyrannosaurus: This large flesh eater weighed about eight tons and is known to be from South Dakota. Age: Late Cretaceous, 65 million years old.
You may be interested in visiting the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs for more prehistoric adventure. Also the Museum of Geology located at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology is full of fantastic regional discoveries.
Dinosaur Park was built by the City of Rapid City and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), project Number 960, in 1936. The property has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United State Department of the Interior and the views are pretty spectacular as well.
Curry, Allen and Kid were apprehended outside of Rapid City near Cowboy Hill. Curry and Allen admitted to stealing the horses and exonerated Kid Hall from the deed, but to no avail. All three were given a preliminary hearing and locked up in a log cabin under guard. Around midnight a group of men broke into the cabin and carried Curry, Allen and Hall up a hill (Skyline Drive) just west of town for some vigilante justice. Kid Hall protested his innocence until the end, but all three men were hung from the tree. The three men were strangled as they were found hanging from the tree by their necks with their feet touching the ground.
There is an interesting fact about this location that is missed by many visitors to the park: Western Justice. Louis Curry, AJ (Doc) Allen, and a young man named Kid Hall were hanged at the outcropping of rocks approximately 200 feet north of this location on June 21, 1877. Curry and Allen, known criminals, were on there way back from Crook City, Dakota Territory, with a stolen herd of horses. Kid Hall, who was on his way from Deadwood to Rapid City by foot, made the fateful decision to fall in with Curry and Allen.
