Louisville Unearthed: Long live Lottie the Triceratops

Lottie the Triceratops lives in the California neighborhood.

Dinosaurs may be extinct to most of the world, but Louisville still has one.

That would be Lottie the Triceratops, and she hangs out behind Great Northern Manufacturing Co., located off West Broadway in the California neighborhood. The triceratops is a 30-foot-long statue that dates back to the 1964 World’s Fair held in New York.

The huge dinosaur statue actually was airlifted into the fair by helicopter, according to a sketch and blurb that appeared in a 1963 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine (see below).

Lottie was part of a dinosaur exhibit by Sinclair Oil Corporation, dubbed Sinclair Dinoland – no doubt a concept owing to dinosaurs being very popular with kids and, well, giving us oil. There also were statues of a brontosaurus and a tyrannosaurus rex, along with several others, and kids checking out the exhibit could have souvenir plastic statues made of their favorites while they were there.

Sometime in the 1970s, it landed in Louisville by way of a flatbed truck, spending some time as an exhibit at the Louisville Zoo before being transported to the Louisville Museum of Natural History and Science (now the Kentucky Science Center). It ended up outside the museum and when the museum decided to focus on science, it was moved to its current location, which has been Lottie’s home ever since.

A couple of years ago, we actually walked into the company’s reception office and asked if we could see the dinosaur – the receptionist said, “Sure! She’s out back.” So, yes, Lottie apparently accepts visitors, as long as you ask politely first.

So many locals grew up seeing the triceratops at the zoo and/or the science center that it’s kind of sad to see it wasting away in that back lot. But it’s not too difficult to find, and it might make your favorite youngster’s day to know that, yes, there are dinosaurs in Louisville.

There’s a Facebook page dedicated to the statue, and the folks behind that page want to raise awareness in hopes of finding a more suitable home for Lottie, where she can be enjoyed by more people. The page dubbed her Lottie by taking the phrase “Louisville’s Own Triceratops” to get the acronym “LOT.” They want to see her get more attention, and we hope it works.

In addition, if you want a foot-long replica model kit of Lottie, you can get one from New York sculptor Joe Laudati. It even includes a plaque saying, “1964 World Fair Triceratops.”

Every Friday, Louisville Unearthed will bring you an unusual fact, historical nugget, place, person, etc., that you may not know about our city.