How a Fruita icon survived extinction

FRUITA, Colo. — In the center of downtown Fruita is a 20-foot-tall dinosaur. She’s quiet. She doesn’t eat much. Her presence is known by locals and travelers alike.

In the late 1980s, she lived about a mile away on some land that fell into the guardianship of the federal government. The property was falling into disrepair, inviting vandalism. A decision was made to raze the building — and the dino — to the ground.

Sherry Tice wanted a different fate for the old dinosaur. Hadn’t our scaly ancestors been through enough destruction?

Sherry Tice holds a picture of her and her late husband in front of Dinni the Dinosaur, located a mile away from where it is now.

How big is a dinosaur, anyway?

In 1986 Tice and her husband, Warren Harrison, opened a pizza shop in a building that had been known as The Dinosaur Store for many years prior. They named their shop Dinosaur Pizza, a natural conclusion given the stucco and iron behemoth outside their eatery.

The building had been vacant for several years when Tice and Harrison opened their pizzeria. But from the late 1940s to the late 1970s, generations of kids and travelers visited the Dinosaur Store to buy soda and candy.

When they first opened the business, Tice wanted to know more about the history of the dinosaur out front. She tracked down the original owners, who no longer lived in Fruita, and started a correspondence with Ray Thomas and his wife.

From these letters, Tice learned the story of the Thomases, the Dinosaur Store and how "Dinni" was built.

“They loved to go out in their jeep and explore the hills because they loved collecting dinosaur bones,” Tice said of the Thomas family. “Because you know, we’re kind of up to our ears in dinosaur bones out here.”

The Thomases had a little rock shop at the southeastern edge of Fruita. In the late 1940s, they heard the news that a section of Highway 50 would be built right in front of their store and decided to start selling gasoline. They wanted an attraction to pull travelers off the highway. A dinosaur made sense given the history of the area, but the Thomases didn’t know how to build one or how big it should be. Where did you turn to in 1948 without the internet?

“They wrote to the Smithsonian and asked them to send them specs for a dinosaur,” recalled Tice. “And so they sent the specs and [the Thomases] built that dinosaur out of railroad ties, chicken wire, and ferrocement.”

It was the Thomases who named the dinosaur “Dinni.” Tice pronounces it like “Deeny.”

Over the years, the Dinosaur Store changed ownership multiple times. As Dinni’s paint would wear off, the various owners would express their unique vision and repaint Dinni how they saw fit. Sometimes Dinni had a yellow underbelly. At one point, she had red light bulbs for eyes and a board running down her spine populated with more red light bulbs.

Tice said, “Later on, there was a speaker put in its mouth and a remote control from inside the gas station, and they could press a button and the dinosaur would roar. One lady was pumping gas and the dinosaur roared and it scared her so bad she jumped in the bar ditch nearby.”

Ida Ogden remembers Dinni well. She grew up making stops at the Dinosaur Store on her way back into town.

Ogden said when she was a little girl, Dinni was green with orange spots. She said, “I cannot separate those two things in my mind because [to a little kid] the dinosaur was the dinosaur store.”

“And the dinosaur store was really cool because it was an older building and you walked into it and you walked down the ramp and the floor creaked and there were big jars of jerky everywhere and a whole glass case with candy in it,” Ogden continued.

She said her dad used to purposefully buy peppered jerky that was too hot for her so she wouldn’t eat so much.

Dinni gets a facelift

By the early 1980s, the Dinosaur Store had closed for good. A truck driver had run into Dinni’s tail. Seeing its historic value, an art society in Grand Junction raised funds to rebuild the dinosaur. Ogden’s cousin, an artist, was hired to totally rebuild Dinni from the ground up. Her brother was a welder and was hired to weld the metal skeleton.

Dinni is rebuilt from the ground up Courtesy: Ida Ogden

Near Extinction

Tice and Harrison signed a lease on the property in 1985 to start building out their restaurant. Dinni still had a pretty good coat of paint on a brand-new chassis. They opened their pizzeria and all was good until they received notice that the owners of the property had become entangled in the aftermath of the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s. Tice and Harrison were powerless and had to find another home for their business, which they did. Unfortunately, they had to leave Dinni behind.

The bank that foreclosed on the property owners went under. The federal government stepped in.

Tice said, “I forget how that went anyway. It was like either the property was to be razed, which means clearing everything off or they would have to secure it and patrol it, you know, to make sure it stayed secure. Well, they just decided that they would rather not have the headache and decided to clear the property.” Which would have meant the extinction of a rural icon.

“When we found out they were going to do that, I went down to the federal building in Grand Junction and I asked if the federal government would give us that dinosaur for the town of Fruita,” said Tice. She expected a fight. But, they didn’t offer a fight at all. They just said yes.

Then the hard part began: getting all interested parties in Fruita to agree on where to put the dinosaur. Many options were discussed but, ultimately, placing Dinni in Circle Park in the center of town made the most sense.

Fruita celebrated the move in 1990. Courtesy: Fruita Chamber of Commerce

Dinni finds a new home... and a new name

With a new location secured, a crane lifted Dinni and set the dinosaur onto a trailer, and hauled her down the road to her new home. A local welder, Daryl McKay, built a wrought iron fence around Dinni to keep her (and onlookers) safe. As a joke, he welded a leash around her ankle to abide by Fruita’s leash law. 

Local kids were given the opportunity to rename Dinni. They settled on Grrrreta, emphasizing a dinosaur growl as you say her name. 

For Tice, the story of Dinni-now-Grrrreta is an example of what can happen when you just ask. Today, Fruita can enjoy an artifact from a different era of the Western Slope, and Grrrreta will not likely face extinction again.

Cullen Purser is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at cullenpurser@rmpbs.org.