Excerpt from “The Bulls of Durham” living history book by Sheila Amir.
At Northgate Park located on Lavender Street, there’s a rock foundation and chimney. There is no signage posted explaining it, plus no safety fencing around the structural remains. It comes across as a bit eerie, even more so because no one visiting the park is phased by it. Fret not, there’s actually a delightful story behind this, and a dinosaur gets involved. It’s all very Durham.
The remnants are of a special house built sometime in the 1930s when making foundations and chimneys out of rocks must have been all the rage. The surrounding Northgate Park was also established in the 1930s. In 1946, the house was the very first home of The Museum of Life and Science. Today, the Museum of Life and Science sits northwest of its origins in an expansive 84 acres of scientific wonder featuring everything from real-life bulls, bears, and butterflies to dinosaurs that are rumored to come alive at night.
The Museum of Life and Science, like nearly everything else in Durham, came from humble beginnings. The museum opened in the small house on Lavender Street and was called the Children’s Museum. It was the first “trailside” nature center in North Carolina. From there the museum expanded with exhibits on minerals and fossils. And, because Durham, it was only a matter of time before a space exhibit became the next logical step. A volunteer kindly rented a truck and transported the famed Mercury Redstone rocket all the way from Alabama. The rocket still stands tall outside of the current museum location on Murray street.
The small house at 404 Lavender Street may have literally had a rock-hard, solid foundation, but unfortunately, it was built in the Ellerbe Creek floodplain. After over 8 decades of intermittent flooding, maintaining the structure became a wash. The City of Durham, who had ownership of the building, was unable to even use it for storage because of water, mold, and mildew damage. Nostalgia is no match for black mold. In 2014 the house was torn down leaving the foundation to house the very flora and fauna that gave the museum its roots. Pun intended.
Follow the Ellerbe path alongside the Ellerbe creek towards the current home of the Museum of Life and Science, and there is another ‘Only in Durham’ relic that is beloved beyond belief. A giant, 77 foot-long, fiberglass brontosaurus. Meet Bronto. According to The Museum of Life and Sciences records, Bronto was built in 1967 and was part of a Prehistoric Trail exhibit. He was painstakingly custom built with a wooden frame and fiberglass body. Bronto is 77 feet long, a full 5 feet longer than experts state real-life brontosauruses were. Chalk it up to Durham’s longstanding history of going above and beyond.
At the time of his construction, Bronto was thought to be the largest dinosaur replica in existence. The exhibit took a total of 4 years to build and included several dinosaurs, some cave people, and luscious North Carolina foliage giving the feeling of being transported to the Mesozoic Era. The exhibit was all the rage from the day it opened in 1967 clear through to the early 90s. But, just like the humble house on Lavender Street, the Prehistoric Trail exhibit was also in a floodplain. Years of floods took their toll on the exhibit and then in 1996 Hurricane Fran wiped out Durham’s dinosaurs near the brink of extinction, leaving only Bronto in her wake. Perhaps he was spared because brontosaurus means Thunder Lizard and so the storm found a kindred spirit in Bronto.
Bronto withstood time, floods, ice storms, and hurricanes only to be abruptly decapitated in a senior prank gone wrong in June 2009. This sparked public outrage akin to losing a human member of the community. His head and neck were hacked off with an ax early one Monday morning. Pieces of his neck were found near his body.
By Wednesday the community put down their metaphorical pitchforks when the head was located in northern Durham county on Preston Andrews Road. It was surprisingly undamaged for a hacked 42-year-old fiberglass dino head. News of Bronto’s stolen head reached all the way to the Smithsonian who ran an article on Smithosian.com titled, “Dinosaur Decapitation in Durham.” The article reported a Durhamite named Mark Shiflett had offered a $100 reward out of his own pocket. The community love for Bronto was and still remains no small thing.
This is where the story takes a very Durham twist.
The head was found, and so were the pranksters. Names were never revealed, and charges were never pressed. The Durham community, especially the Northgate community who viewed Bronto as a living, breathing neighbor, were outraged at the Museum’s decision not to press charges. Because the Museum owned Bronto and the property surrounded the long-necked celeb, it was entirely up to them how they wanted to handle the situation.
The pranksters spent their senior summer being schooled instead of in court hearings. The Museum and Life and Sciences chose to have the culprits spend their summer volunteering at the museum as general laborers while their peers embarked on their first summer as freshly graduated adults. In the end, the publicity of the dino decapitation helped raise much-needed funds to restore Bronto and the area surrounding him. The Thunder Lizard stands fortified by sturdy repairs, community love, and even validation from the scientific community that brontosauruses were, in fact, real, something Durham has always known.