Creation Museum, step aside! Welcome to Dinosaur Kingdom, a Virginia roadside amusement park in which plastic dinosaurs eat plastic Union soldiers:
Dinosaur Kingdom is a twist on the biblical Creationist view that people and dinosaurs lived together. Here, people live with dinosaurs -- but only until the dinosaurs eat them.As the tour begins, visitors are asked to imagine themselves in 1863. A family of Virginia paleontologists has accidentally dug a mine shaft into a hidden valley of living dinosaurs. Unfortunately, the Union Army has tagged along, hoping to kidnap the big lizards and use them as "weapons of mass destruction" against the South.
What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy. As you enter, a lunging, bellowing T-Rex head lets you know that the dinosaurs are mad -- and they only get madder. A big snake has eaten one Yankee, and is about to eat another. An Allasaurus grabs a bluecoat off of his rearing horse while a second soldier futilely tries to lasso the big lizard. Another Yankee crawls up a tree with a stolen egg while the mom dinosaur batters it down. Mark has augmented some of these displays with motors: toothy jaws flap, tails and tongues wag.
Mark explains that he originally wanted the dinosaurs to attack Pancho Villa and his troops at the turn of the 20th century, but then decided against it. "I was really looking for some villains," he explained. "The Pancho Villa thing -- nobody remembers that." Which is true. Instead, Mark's substitution of Union soldiers seems certain to win him favor, at least locally. "I mean, for Christ's sake, people still fight the Civil War down here," he said. "I would gladly have changed the color of the uniforms -- if I was from the North."
Comments
Still fighting the Civil War? Sheesh! So it seems that ferocious Confederate soldiers are dinosaurs.
Posted by: Zeno | December 7, 2008 12:31 AM
Many americans, not just in the south, question not the outcome but the pretext of the civil war. The U.S. is a "union of states" joined voluntarily in 1776. The civil war was about states rights and most importantly to "unvolunteer" to be a part of that union. Many feel that the south was well within their rights to leave the union. By showing that a state can not leave it discourages others from joining. Puerto Rico refused keeping their options open.
Posted by: Ed | December 7, 2008 1:28 PM
Ed, The civil war was about slavery. Secession was just a pretext the southerners settled on in a desperate attempt to continue making their money on the blood and sweat of other human beings. We know this because numerous prominent pro-slavery politicians attacked secession when non-slavery reasons were given for it. We know this because the Confederate constitution did not allow secession from the Confederacy. We know this because in the final days of the civil war, as the last few states decided to try to make soldiers out of their slaves, the legislatures of several of the states, including Virginia, agreed that if slaves could be soldiers, their cause had never made any sense. There are dozens of other reasons we know the civil war was about slavery, and secession was pretext.
Posted by: llewelly | December 7, 2008 6:03 PM
Puerto Rico also wanted to have representation and receive money from the government, without having to put up with any of those pesky taxes and laws, which also sank their ideas of being a state. It kinda sucks when you want all the benefits but none of the responsibilities, and everybody else says "no way".
Posted by: Badger3k | December 7, 2008 11:54 PM
If the war had been about slavery, the South could have stayed in the union and kept their slaves.Lincoln proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to keep the institution of slavery if the South would not seceed. It was turned down! The North only wanted to subjugate the South and spend the South's money!
Dan Boyette--NC
Posted by: Dan Boyette | December 9, 2008 6:13 AM