Naturally historic

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- It's been two years since the Bollinger County Museum of Natural History was incorporated and four years since volunteers began fixing the building where its antiquities are housed. In this short span, the museum has become known for its dinosaur exhibits, especially the bone fragments of the Hadrosaur -- known colloquially as the "Missouri dinosaur."

Recently House Speaker Pro Tem Rod Jetton, R-Marble Hill, introduced legislation to make the Hadrosaur the official dinosaur of Missouri. That legislation is now waiting approval in the Senate. This distinction could only add to the museum's already growing popularity as the state's -- and possibly the Midwest's -- only natural history museum.

"There is so much interest in dinosaurs from little kids, old kids, every age kid," said museum board president Eva Dunn. "We want this to be a first-class museum for here, for the area, state and country."

When the museum first opened in June 2002, it operated only two days a week. As displays have expanded and interest has increased, the museum is open from noon to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and by appointment on other days.

The museum is still a work in progress. It has added display cases to show off collections of fossils, dinosaur eggs, and replicas of the dinosaurs found locally and beyond and background graphics that depict the local ecology of that time. As the museum grows, the board has plans to move the displays upstairs, leaving the first floor as a working lab to study the fragments being unearthed in a geological dig in nearby Glenallen. Dunn said the museum is also awaiting the arrival of a 30-foot replica of the Hadrosaur, which will have a special place on the second floor.

Not all of the museum is given over to things prehistoric. Also included are displays of Civil War memorabilia, American Indian artifacts and a display commemorating the work of Thomas Edison that includes a working gramophone. Currently a traveling exhibit acknowledging the Lewis and Clark expedition is on display.

The main attraction remains the dinosaur bones and other fossils. Visitors have come from Michigan, Illinois and Texas, as well as from around the state. Dunn said that the curator of a natural history museum in New Jersey, which also has the remains of a Hadrosaur, came to scrutinize the museum's collection.

Digging in

The groundwork for the museum was laid in 1942 near Glenallen when the Chronister family discovered some large bones while digging a well. At the urging of a geologist, they sent the bones to the Smithsonian, where paleontologist Charles Gilmore determined they were from the tail of a dinosaur. Gilmore died soon afterward, and the bones were stored away and forgotten until the 1970s when Bruce Stinchcomb bought the property hoping to find more fossils. A number of pits yielded bones and teeth of various dinosaurs and the remains of crocodiles, fish and turtles.

In the early 1990s Guy Darrough of Arnold, Mo., began the current excavation, and in 1999 with two others founded the Missouri Ozark Dinosaur Project.

If discovery of the bones was a coincidence, then so was the fact that they were there at all, Dunn said. In this part of the country, the top layer of rock is sandstone, which wears away more quickly than other deposits and takes with it whatever was buried beneath. The Glenallen dig site sits on the remains of a large fault in the earth, which was covered with sediment. What was buried in it was preserved.

Coincidence figured into bringing the excavation together with the museum. The building where the museum is located had sat vacant for 70 years. Until the Great Depression, it had been the Will Mayfield College. The El Nathan Foundation bought the property in the early 1950s as a home for the elderly; one building still is such a home. El Nathan had planned to build a hospital in the other, but could not get the necessary permits. The El Nathan board didn't want to sell the building, Dunn said.

"They wanted the people in the community to have it," she said.

A group of businessmen who knew people who wanted to build a museum put them in touch with the board of directors of El Nathan (which means God's gift), and the museum soon became reality. The Will Mayfield Heritage Foundation Board was formed and it holds the lease on the building and is restoring it. It soon became apparent, Dunn said, that the museum needed its own board of directors. The Will Mayfield Foundation Board has 15 members; the museum board has eight. Thirty-five volunteers have helped keep the museum going. So far the museum has been supported by donations of funds and labor. However, the museum board recently received some money from the Missouri Humanities Council and is exploring the possibility of grants from other state and federal agencies.

That the state's only natural history museum is in such a rural area, Dunn said, "is one of those little neat quirks of Missouri. This is not only a fantastic boon for the area, but a fun recreational boon. Visitors can enjoy the beautiful country after they visit the museum."

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160