A longtime statue on the western side of Nacmine has been replaced with a brand new dinosaur.
People may remember an old concrete horse near the old camp kitchen at the “Welcome To Drumheller” sign along Highway 575 on the western entrance to Drumheller. The new statue has been installed by the DinoArts Association. Darryl Reid, Chair of DinoArts shares why a new statue was needed at that location. “It really began with the fact that the old statue that had been there for many, many years, the original pit pony, had fallen into a state where it was unrecoverable. It was dangerous so we recognized the need to get it out of there but it wasn’t happening. We got together with the various stakeholders, as best we could, and came up with a plan to replace it with something else.”
As for the new statue that was to take the place of the pit pony, Reid admits there were a couple of options. “There were a couple of ideas that were passed around. One was a prehistoric horse and the other was to fashion our model after the original ‘GloCoal’ poster dino. Probably was one of the first instances where a dinosaur was used to promote a product here in the valley. This sauropod, long neck dinosaur, had been used in their (the Atlas Coal Mine) posters. It was cute and it seemed to be a good model for us to move forward with in the replacement of the pit pony.”
The new statue does pay homage to the original horse that was there as the new dino has a saddle on it acknowledges Reid. “For one thing is because it is a dino / horse. The other is we want our statues to be friendly and approachable, especially by children. We wanted something we know (kids) are going to crawl on it anyhow, why not have a saddle integrated.”
Reid also notes that this new dinosaur has a nickname. “We have a nickname for all of our dinosaurs in DinoArts. This one we chose ‘Dazzle’. Dazzle was (former town councillor) Lisa Hansen-Zacharuk’s favourite horse and we wanted to pay tribute to Lisa. She was an important part of our community.”
You can see “Dazzle” at the west end of Nacmine. DinoArts maintains and develops the numerous dinosaur statues around the community. Huge thank you to Frank and the team at Dinosaur Valley Studios for the design and installation of the newest addition to the DinoArts family of dinosaurs. If you would like to support DinoArts, visit their website for all the details on how you can.
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