For Sale: T. Rex, Good Condition, Woolly Mammoth, Needs Repair

Roadside Attractions Face Tough Market; Buy 400 Prairie Dogs, Get a Special Cow

By JAMES R. HAGERTY

MARBLEHEAD, Ohio—For more than five decades, the fiberglass dinosaurs of Prehistoric Forest have loomed goofily over the entrance to this Lake Erie tourist town. Now they are facing extinction.


Len and Denise Tieman, who have owned the roadside attraction since 1995, feel they have had a good run. They intend to close Prehistoric Forest on Sept. 12, after one last Labor Day rush, and retire. So far, they haven't found anyone eager to carry on the tradition.

Mom-and-Pop roadside attractions are struggling for their meager share of the tourist dollar. They suffer from a weak economy, changes in travel habits and kids unlikely to be wowed by stationary dinos and miniature golf after watching "Avatar" in 3-D or slashing their siblings with Wii swords.

"We just lose them one by one," laments Brian Butko, a Pittsburgh historian who writes about roadside attractions, whose golden age was in the 1950s and 1960s.

Prairie Dog Town, near Oakley, Kan., is for sale, with an asking price of $450,000, says its owner, Larry Farmer, who also wants to retire. It comes with 37 billboards advertising the attraction, 400 prairie dogs and—for anyone not sufficiently excited by burrowing rodents—a live, six-legged cow. Deer Forest in Coloma, Mich., is also on the market. The owner, John S. Modica, says he would throw in the llamas and pot-bellied pigs. Dinosaur World, near Beaver Lake in Arkansas, closed five years ago.

"Some of the classic tourist stops have disappeared," says Doug Kirby, publisher of roadsideamerica.com. Snake farms are in a rut, and mermaid springs are evaporating. When owners decide to retire, there often is no one willing to take over. Even so, Mr. Kirby's website still lists more than 9,000 attractions and "oddities," including the world's largest hairball in Garden City, Kan., and the Cockroach Hall of Fame in Plano, Texas.

Today's tourists are more likely to zoom directly to a resort than meander on back roads. "People are much more looking to get where they're going rather than stop to look at the world's largest ball of twine," says Jim Futrell of the National Amusement Park Historical Association.

Among the survivors are museums of objects that, at first glance, don't seem to require commemoration. They include the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wis.; the Pencil Sharpener Museum in Carbon Hill, Ohio; and the Museum of Salt and Pepper Shakers in Gatlinburg, Tenn.

Some attractions have survived by offering more frills. When the family of Owen Godwin opened an attraction in Orlando, Fla., in 1949, it was 16 acres of swampland devoted to alligators and snakes. Now known as Gatorland and still owned by the Godwin family, the park has spread to 110 acres and includes a train ride, a water-spray zone, a petting zoo and an aviary. Visitors can throw raw chicken to gators and sit on them, though not at the same time.

In Marblehead, the Tiemans have never had the means or inclination for such expansion. They say business has been a bit slow in recent years but Prehistoric Forest has given them a good living. Mr. Tieman, 63 years old, wants to spend more time on sculpture and family. "This is very time-demanding in the summer," he says. "We have no private life almost."

The business, whose full name is Prehistoric Forest and Mystery Hill, referring to a side attraction where water appears to run uphill, opened in the early 1950s. The Tiemans bought it in 1995, when it had been closed for a few years and was overgrown with weeds. Mr. Tieman, who had worked as an electrician, at the time was recovering from cancer, and his wife, Denise, thought he needed a fun occupation. "We drove by here one day and I said, 'That's it! We could do this,"' Ms. Tieman says.

The business has always had perils. Two years ago, a falling tree decapitated the Tiemans' woolly mammoth; it's still wrapped in a tarp, awaiting repairs. One woman accused Mr. Tieman of promoting the theory of evolution by displaying a statue of a grinning cave man. Ms. Tieman says a surprising number of people ask whether the dinosaurs are real. "I just look at them and say, 'You know, dinosaurs died a long time ago."'

Mr. Tieman has kept a couple dozen of the original dinos, made from wood frames and fiberglass, and produced nine of his own. A self-taught dino designer, he uses a heated wire to slice through Styrofoam blocks, then does detailing with razor knives and sandpaper, before coating the beast in fiberglass.

Jackson Maurer, an eight-year-old touring the attraction with his grandmother, approves of Mr. Tiemans' artistry. Looking over the Tyrannosaurus rex, Jackson says: "I can only tell that it's not real because the real one would be bigger."

Not all kids are so accepting. Mr. Tieman recalls an eight-year-old girl who informed him a T. rex should have two claws on each hand, not three. "We went out and performed surgery," slicing off the excess appendages, Mr. Tieman says.

Twenty years ago, visitors were issued toy M16 rifles and urged to blast away at the dinos. After the Tiemens bought the park, they ended that. They wanted family fun, not "blood and guts," Mr. Tieman says. They have tried gentler kinds of interactivity, including a sandbox where kids can pretend to find fossils. Dinosaurs that move and make noise might help, Mr. Tieman thinks, but would cost at least $50,000 apiece.

Matt Creager, who works for a building-products supplier in Columbus, Ohio, visited Prehistoric Forest as a child. When he heard it was closing, he took his daughters. Their verdict? "It was actually pretty cool," says Millie Creager, 10. "Awesome," says her sister, Echo, 6.

After the doors close in September, the Tiemans intend to leave the forest as it is for at least a year. They hope to find a buyer but say they won't sell to anyone who wants to put up condos or otherwise change the nature of the 10-acre property.

How much for the whole attraction? Mr. Tieman pauses, then says: "A million might buy it right now."

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com