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T. Rex ‘Sue’ Makes a Splash in Idaho Falls
IDAHO FALLS — A Tyrannosaurus Rex named ‘Sue’ has been trucked to museums from Kansas City to Los Angeles, Boston to Seattle. But nowhere has she had the kind of reception she got in this windswept southeastern Idaho community.
BY KRISTEN MOULTON
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
When Sue rolled into town — her pieces in 27 crates aboard three semi-trucks — she had a six-police-car escort. Idaho Falls television stations interrupted their midmorning broadcasts and spectators gathered to watch one of the nation’s hottest museum exhibits pass.
"As far as news events go, this falls in the same category as the Teton Dam disaster," says Chuck Rice, former chairman of the board of the county museum that in October became the Museum of Idaho. "It’s a big deal for Idaho Falls."
(The Teton Dam failed in 1976, flooding parts of southeastern Idaho.)
The national "a T. Rex Named Sue" exhibit, which opens here Feb. 18, is indeed a big deal for this city of 53,000.
Where the old Bonneville Museum in the historic Carnegie Library building saw 7,000 visitors a year, the new Museum of Idaho hopes to attract 150,000 in its first 10 months. Two-thirds are expected to come to see the cast replica of Sue, which will be on display through May 26.
The museum, with an infusion of millions from an Idaho Falls native, has been expanded to include the nearby former Masonic Lodge. The two structures are connected by a new two-story exhibition hall, with a curved glass window looking west to the railroad tracks and downtown. With nearly 31,000 square feet, it is now Idaho’s largest museum, space-wise.
It takes a lot of room to house Sue, which together with side exhibits weighs 35,000 pounds.
The dinosaur (it is not known if she was really a she) is the largest and most complete T. Rex ever discovered. Permanently housed at Chicago’s Field Museum, the fossil is 42 feet long and 13 feet high at the hips. Sue’s skull is 5 feet long.
Sue is so big and so heavy that the Utah Museum of Natural History is not able to display the exhibit, says Patti Carpenter, spokeswoman for the museum on the University of Utah campus.
"The skeletal structure just could not fit through our small doors," Carpenter says. "We were going to have to take out a whole wall to get the exhibit."
So the Utah museum will have to wait. It is trying to raise $40 million to build a new facility that would be able to house immense exhibits such as Sue.
It is not only Sue’s size or the fact she is 90 percent complete that is alluring. It is also her recent history.
She was discovered in August 1990 on a South Dakota Indian reservation by Sue Hendrickson, a paleontologist working for a private company, who gave the dinosaur her name.
There was a long custody battle involving the government and the rancher whose reservation land she was on. In the end, the Field Museum bought Sue at a 1997 Sotheby’s auction for $8.4 million, the most ever paid for a fossil.
Executive Director David Pennock says the Museum of Idaho wanted to "set the standard high at the beginning," and so chose Sue for its opening exhibit. "We wanted something grand and unexpected."
The old Bonneville museum was expanded with $3 million from the Carr Foundation, headed by Greg Carr, who grew up next-door to Pennock in Idaho Falls and went on to own the successful Internet company Prodigy.
Carr, who now lives in Cambridge, Mass., sold Prodigy in the 1990s, and created the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. After the white supremacist group Aryan Nations went bankrupt at Hayden Lake, Idaho, Carr bought the complex and is donating it to North Idaho College.
Three years ago, Carr recruited Pennock, who has a doctorate in biology, to identify a project Carr could fund in his hometown.
They decided the museum, with its committed volunteers and niche in the community, was the perfect place to showcase the natural and cultural history of Idaho.
The museum has raised another $2 million in pledges and contributions.
"It’s not the classic museum," Pennock says.
The Museum of Idaho will respond to the times with exhibits that are topical for the region, Pennock says. Next winter, it hopes to have a national Lewis and Clark exhibition.
And the facility will be heavy on education. For instance, in the past few weeks, 3,000 junior high students have attended the museum to take part in the national "Jason" project. They watched on screens, as did thousands of students around the nation, as divers explored the kelp beds of the Channel Islands in the English Channel.
Nick Gailey, the program director for the museum, says 25,000 tickets already have been sold for the Sue exhibit.
Along with Sue, visitors can see dozens of other dinosaur replicas — and a few real fossils — on loan from Western Paleontological Laboratories in Orem, Brigham Young University’s paleontology department and Dinolab in Salt Lake City.
‘SUE’ IN IDAHO FALLS
What: National exhibit "A T. Rex Named Sue," a replica of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex ever found.
Where: Museum of Idaho, 200 N. Eastern Ave., Idaho Falls, Idaho. Take Broadway exit off Interstate 15, travel east over the Snake River, through downtown and over the railroad tracks.
When: "Sue" opens Feb. 18 and runs through May 26. Museum is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
How Much: $5 adults; $3 ages 4-18; free for those under 4; $18 for families.
Who to Contact: Call 208-522-1400 or 1-800-325-7328 or go to http://www.museumofidaho.org
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