Roadside Real Estate That Sells Itself
On the edge of the desert, right off Interstate 10, two concrete giants stare out across the highway.
One has a green jaw and short arms—Mr. Rex. The other is long and low, a 150-foot Brontosaurus named Dinny.
They belong to Cabazon, California, but they really live in the imaginations of drivers flying past outlet malls and wind turbines.
You see them before you even know you’re looking.
There’s no need for billboards—they are the billboards. The attraction is near Desert Hills Premium Outlets.
On holiday weekends, shoppers spill into the gravel lot around the Cabazon Dinosaurs, snapping pictures before heading back to their Teslas and U-Hauls.
The sculptures were built in phases as part of a promotional strategy for the now-demolished Wheel Inn restaurant.
Dinny started in 1964 and finished in 1975. Mr. Rex followed in 1981 and reached completion in 1986.
Claude Bell, the man behind it, wanted travelers to pull off the road. He figured a dinosaur might do the trick.
They’ve stayed in the public eye ever since. Pee-wee Herman climbed into Mr. Rex’s mouth in the 1985 Warner Bros. film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Four years later, The Wizard closed on a scene inside the concrete beast.
For a while, the Cabazon Dinosaurs became shorthand for desert weirdness—oversized, out of place, and hard to forget.
In 2023, after Paul Reubens passed, Mr. Rex got a makeover. The owners repainted him in a gray tuxedo and red bow tie, just like Pee-wee.
Visitors came for photos, and others left flowers. It was one of the more unusual things to do east of Los Angeles that summer—and maybe the most heartfelt.
The Artist Who Built a Billboard
Claude Bell bought the land in 1946 for $5,000—cheap, even for desert. Back then, Cabazon hadn’t seen much development.
A deal with the state let Bell clear gravel from the lot in exchange for a free leveling job.
By 1952, he’d started living part-time on the property. Six years later, he opened the Wheel Inn, a coffee shop and diner built to catch freeway traffic before the Cabazon outlets ever existed.
Bell had worked at Knott’s Berry Farm since 1947. He made life-size concrete sculptures of cowboys and miners for benches and storefronts.
By 1951, he ran the portrait studio there, with his wife and daughter doing charcoal sketches for tourists.
That job paid the bills, but the Cabazon Dinosaurs were something else.
Dinny came first. Bell began in 1964. The materials—steel, wire mesh, cement—weren’t fancy. Much of it came from a flash flood that ruined state supplies for a nearby overpass.
Bell salvaged what he could. He said he wanted to build something like Lucy the Elephant in New Jersey, which he’d seen as a kid on the boardwalk in Atlantic City.
He didn’t hire a crew. He brought in engineer Ralph Titus and used a welder, some homemade tools, and a lot of time.
The idea was that the dinosaur itself would be the advertisement. If people stopped to look, they might eat at the Wheel Inn.
If kids ran up the tail and into the belly of a Brontosaurus, maybe their parents would order pancakes.
Bell worked for more than a decade on Dinny. He hoped the eyes would glow red at night, and maybe the mouth would spit fire.
That part didn’t happen, but by 1975, Dinny was finished. The restaurant saw more traffic.
The sculpture had done its job.
Vertical Builds and Delayed Dreams
Bell didn’t waste time on small models or scale mock-ups. By 1980, he was already assembling scaffolding north of Dinny for a second dinosaur.
This one would stand tall—a Tyrannosaurus rex he named Mr. Rex. He aimed for 65 feet high.
The plan included a built-in slide through the tail. He thought kids could ride down and land by the gift shop.
The structure took shape fast. Wire mesh and steel framing came together by 1981, and cement followed. Bell estimated it would be finished a year after Dinny, but real life didn’t move that fast.
Tools broke, and money got tight. He built his steel benders and even turned an old truck into a lift. He kept going.
By 1986, Mr. Rex stood complete. You could see him from the highway, facing east.
Bell figured people coming out of Los Angeles would notice first. The total cost of both Cabazon Dinosaurs was $300,000.
That’s about half a million today, adjusted for inflation.
He had sketched out more ideas: a woolly mammoth, a prehistoric garden, even a ride.
None of those happened. He ran out of time. Bell passed in 1988 at 91. His sculptures stayed. They had no moving parts or electronics—just rebar, wire, and concrete.
Even though it was unfinished, the site started attracting a new type of visitor—travelers who didn’t care about the Wheel Inn or pancakes.
They came for the Cabazon Dinosaurs—kids posed with Mr. Rex’s teeth. The tail slide never opened, but people still climbed inside.
For Bell, the sculptures had been a side project. For everyone else, they were the main event.
Ownership Deals and Faith-Based Rebranding
After Claude Bell passed, his wife, Anna Marie, tried to keep the project alive. She pitched a 60-acre amusement park—Dinosaur Village—with 12 animatronic dinosaurs, rides, and a simulator theater.
By 1992, that concept had local buzz but never found footing. The land changed hands within three years.
In 1995, developer Gary Kanter of Minkoff and Kanter Associates bought the property.
Kanter had bigger plans: gift shops, a museum, and a 60-room motel near the Main Street exit.
That expansion was approved in 1996. Real estate renderings showed clean sidewalks and a tidy parking lot, but the desert had other ideas. Little of it got built.
Then came a shift. By late 2004, Denise Kanter, Gary’s wife, posted on Revolution Against Evolution—a niche creationist website—announcing plans to rebrand the attraction with a religious message.
The Cabazon Dinosaurs would be repositioned to challenge mainstream science. A replica of Noah’s Ark, a sand maze, and exhibits comparing evolution and creationism were all on the table.
Inside Dinny, once a gift shop, new products arrived: plastic dinosaur toys with creationist slogans and T-shirts reading “By Design and Not by Chance.” By 2005, signage throughout the site questioned the fossil record and promoted a young Earth timeline.
The exhibits didn’t replace everything. Bell’s original murals inside Dinny—like the one of Peking Man labeled “200,000 years ago”—stayed up.
However, nearby posters claimed that fossils were unreliable and that carbon dating was flawed.
Despite criticism, the creationist theme lasted for more than a decade. Some visitors loved it, while others left bad reviews or skipped the indoor areas entirely.
Still, it helped the attraction stand out in a crowded desert of outlet stores and casino resorts.
From a branding angle, the Cabazon Dinosaurs were pivoting—hard—to a new demographic.
Content Makeovers and Pop Culture Residuals
By 2017, the religious tone had started to fade. Visitors posted on travel blogs and Instagram that the creationist merchandise had mostly disappeared.
The T-shirts and posters were gone, and the exhibits, once packed with quotes from anti-evolution speakers, looked more like neutral photo spots again.
Pop culture also helped keep the Cabazon Dinosaurs. The site appeared in music videos like “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears in 1985 and “Raining” by Susanna Hoffs in 2013.
A 1999 episode of Visiting…with Huell Howser gave the dinosaurs a retro TV boost.
In the video game Fallout: New Vegas, a massive T. rex gift shop named “Dinky” was modeled loosely on Mr. Rex.
The repaintings kept the figures current. On Easter, Mr. Rex wore pastels and bunny ears. In October, he became a skeleton.
After Paul Reubens passed in July 2023, workers gave Mr. Rex a fresh coat of gray paint and added a red bow tie—Pee-wee Herman’s uniform.
That month, a few fans left flowers at his feet.
