More from SoCal Wanderer
5 Monumental Rocks in Southern California
Six Great Californian Castles
5 Great Places to Explore Native California
1 of 3
next
I hate to disappoint you, but if you're looking for signs of Southern California's prehistoric dinosaurs, you're probably not going to find much.
At least, they won't be the dinosaurs you may be thinking of, like the T. Rex and Triceratops. After all, we've got lots of their closest living descendant - that is, birds.
You see, some 70 or 80 million years ago - when dinosaurs were still alive - California was still underwater. The ancient sea may have been shallow - and receding - but it didn't leave much for today's paleontologists to find.
I know you're going to protest, but it's true. Even the great beasts in the Natural History Museum's Dinosaur Hall are mostly from Utah, Montana, Wyoming, and beyond.
La Brea Tar Pits? Actually, since the Page Museum and its tar pit site focus on mammals of the Ice Age, they have no dinosaur bones - just mammoths and saber-toothed cats and such.
But there are some great places in Southern California where you can join more recent (but still retro) versions of the extinct creatures for a roadside adventure. Here are six of them:
--
--
1. Cabazon Dinosaurs, Cabazon
When you mention Southern California roadside dinosaurs, everybody talks about the giant ones in Cabazon, which have been clearly visible off the north side of the 10 Freeway for over 30 years, and were famously featured in the movie Pee Wees Big Adventure. There's a three-story concrete T. Rex and a 150-foot-long Apatosaurus that were built by theme park artist Claude Bell (of Knott's Berry Farm fame) to attract customers to his restaurant next door, The Wheel Inn diner. Unfortunately, The Wheel Inn closed back in 2013 - and while the World's Biggest Dinosaurs attraction lives on, it's as a creationist museum masquerading as an amusement park and gift shop. If you're OK with denouncing the theory of evolution for a few minutes while you visit, it's worth a pit stop and a visit inside the dinos (for a small fee) - even just for the photo opp.
Photo: Courtesy of Sandi Hemmerlein
2. Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center, Riverside
Another, larger herd of extinct beasts is off the side of another road: this time just north of the 60 freeway, and just west of Riverside in the Inland Empire. It's not quite the desert, but it's close. Unlike the dinos in Cabazon, these bad boys play hard to get. Some of them have been hiding up there for over 50 years, waiting for you to find them. Although there are more than ten dinosaur sculptures, only a couple of them are near the entrance - so you've got to walk through some of the botanical gardens (of which there are nine acres) and up the Dinosaur Trail to find your own private Jurassic Park. The lumbering souls seem gentle, and almost fragile - some even handmade out of burlap, styrofoam, and household glue, making them more like folk art than your typical big roadside statue. Take some time to walk the trails and peruse the dinosaur eggs in the museum, and try to catch the sunset from up top.
Photo: Courtesy of Sandi Hemmerlein
Photo: Courtesy of Sandi Hemmerlein
3. Dinosaur Swampland, Apple Valley
At first it just looks like any other abandoned lot with an RV parked in it; but upon closer inspection, it actually appears to be some kind of post-apocalyptic wonderland where people coexisted with dinosaurs. In truth, this was the site of a would-be childrens amusement park called Dinosaur Swampland. By the mid-1970s, there were at least 36 dinosaurs across four acres on a 17-acre parcel owned by retiree Lonnie Coffman, originally of Van Nuys. He formed the standing ones out of stucco wire (which looks a lot like chicken wire), which he covered in cement and then stuccoed over - giving them kind of a greenish hue that the sun has since bleached out of most of them. He made the ones lying on the ground, however, by covering molded dirt in poured concrete. Coffman had built the menagerie as a kind of public art piece on his own property, but because of insurance issues and property taxes and other bureaucracy, he could never really get it off the ground as a miniature golf course. The site is currently abandoned and crumbling, and full of broken glass, beehives, and rattlesnakes. Somebody must own that plot of land, so it's best to admire the dinos from the street, and enter only with permission.
Photo: Courtesy of Sandi Hemmerlein
Photo: Courtesy of Sandi Hemmerlein
4. Peggy Sue's Diner-Saur Park, Yermo
Yermo, whose name is derived from the Spanish word meaning wilderness, is an exit off of the 15 freeway on your way to or from Vegas, but instead of bringing traffic to the town, the construction of the freeway allowed travelers to pass right by it. Once a thriving town of places to get gas, something to eat and drink, and to stay the night, many of the businesses closed, leaving a few residents, a Marine base storage unit, the Burger Barn, and Peggy Sues 50s Diner. A classic and original 50s diner, Peggy Sues was built in 1954 out of railroad ties and mortar from the nearby Union Pacific rail yard. Appropriately enough for its Calico-adjacent location, it was purchased by another former Knotts Berry Farm employee and reopened in 1987. Since then, it has remained merely an oddity - an eccentric roadside attraction that, although worth the detour, gets overlooked. Peggy Sues is just so emblematic of the desert dream: to provide something where there is nothing, shelter for those who are lost, food and drink for those hungry and thirsty, whimsy and entertainment amidst desolation and drought. Its a little slice of comfort pie. And it delights.
Photo: Courtesy of Sandi Hemmerlein
Photo: Cou
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
More from SoCal Wanderer 
