Dino-might in a tiny town

Posted bytwosheepstothewindPosted inUncategorized

Ekalaka, Montana, is an amazing little town. 

Smaller by far in population than my home town in Arkansas, it has a school, postoffice, a couple of restaurants, a library, a hospital a couple of bars, a community swimming pool, and a museum.

But it’s the museum that makes the town stand out, in my mind.

Wyrex the T. Rex awaits visitors who turn the corner into the dinosaur room and come face to face with all those teeth.

About 90 years ago, a group of people in the town decided to do some serious work in geology and paleontology. Walter Peck, a state legislator and amateur paleontologist, was one of several founders of the Carter County Museum and the Carter County Geological Society. 

Among their finds were a Triceratops, a T. Rex and a large Anatolian copei, which is a type of plant eater called a hadrosaur.

Vicki slipped by all those teeth to look at another part of the dino room.
Aside from the teeth, those claws on the hind legs are pretty impressive too.
The Triceratops skull is one of the cornerstones of the museum.
And some days, the triceratops was lunch. There was a particularly graphic depiction of how a T. rex would remove the head of the animal to get to the tasty bits.
Pretty cool to get to touch a dinosaur horn.
The hadrosaur is pretty impressive, too.
Like any other small-town museum, it contains memories of local history, including the documents from Leona Mumedy, a stenographer at the Nuremburg Trials after World War II.
I loved the detail on the inside of the door of the bank’s safe.
Be warned, just past the safe is the T. rex. (see the teeth just to the left of the coat rack

The museum is still a busy place, with work going on each summer and a Dino Shindig at the end of July each year. We missed it, unfortunately.

This is our first stop on the Montana Dinosaur Trail, a group of 14 museums dealing with dinosaurs in the state. Vicki found that online, and that’s on our bucket list for the summer.

For more about why this big little town is booming, check out https://cartercountymuseum.org/growing-home-in-ekalaka/ on the museum’s website.

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