For 25 years, I claimed that my office had the best view of any office. Our church was nestled beneath Skyline Drive in Rapid City, South Dakota, high enough to have a good view of downtown below and low sufficient to have an equally good view of the hills above. Our church had a large backyard with plenty of open space, and my office looked out onto the yard. The church, constructed in 1959, was arranged with care by the architect Harold Spitznagel. The congregation had outgrown its downtown building and sought a new and modern place. The congregation grew rapidly following the Second World War and needed space for a large and growing Sunday School as well as a place to worship. The congregation cherished its organ, but wanted the focal point of worship to be the cross. The building committee, in its initial statement of requirements for the architect, wrote of “the importance of view, of skyline and cloud patterns, and of surrounding terrain will help to make a distinctive setting for the church buildings.” I inherited that view of the skyline, cloud patterns, and terrain.

I especially enjoyed coming to my office early in the morning for a telephone call to the national offices of the United Church of Christ, located in Cleveland, Ohio, two time zones to the east. I would describe my setting to my colleagues. “I’m sitting in my office looking outside. Outside my window, wild turkeys are feeding on the crab apples from the tree in the churchyard. I can also see deer grazing on the hillside above the church, and on the skyline, there is a giant dinosaur.” My family laughed and said that they thought I was telling the truth until I got to the part about the dinosaur. I replied that my description was accurate and invited them to come to visit and take a look for themselves.

The dinosaur on the skyline in clear view of my office might be called a statue or a sculpture. It is made of concrete and painted green, one of four such creations crafted to be the size and shape of actual dinosaurs, based on fossil and footprint discoveries in the area in the 1920s and 1930s. During the Great Depression, the structures were built in an attempt to attract tourists to the town. Knowledge of dinosaurs was incomplete, and the largest dinosaur, most easily seen from my office, was labeled a brontosaurus. There are some questions about whether the fossils upon which it was based were from Brontosaurus or another dinosaur, the similar Apatosaurus. The green and white coloring of the sculptures is probably more a product of the designers' imagination than historical accuracy.

One of the treasured features of Dinosaur Park in Rapid City is that visitors are allowed to climb on the sculptures. Children especially enjoy the stegosaurus with its distinctive spikes and dermal plates. The creature’s unique shape makes a kind of slide.

In the five years since I retired and moved out of that office, Dinosaur Park has received new walking paths, benches, and interpretive signs. Having heard about the improvements, we paid the park a brief visit yesterday. I was feeling a bit nostalgic as I looked down on the church building that had been my workplace for more than half of my career. The distinctive roofline and iconic white outdoor cross fit neatly into the view from the hill. I remembered looking out from my office at the church to see the hill above.

The improvements at the park are well done, and we appreciated the effort that was invested to make the park more accessible to people and to offer a bit of historical context, as well as update some of the information about the particular fossils and footprints that inspired the park.

Life goes on. Things change. The leadership of the church has moved to a new generation. The congregation is not as large as the one for which the building was constructed. But for now, the dinosaurs remain. I hope the pastor who now occupies the office enjoys the view as much as I did. I hope that from time to time she describes the view to her colleagues. When they come to visit, the park will welcome adults and children alike and inspire wonder and joy.