The former Meteor City Trading Post near Winslow, Arizona, reopened to the public Saturday for the first time since 2012.
Now called Meteor City on Route 66, it is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., according to its Facebook page.
Here are a few images from reopening weekend:
Meteor City contains these expanded attractions:
- A Dino Drive-Thru where visitors can view 30 dinosaurs from their vehicles
- Gemstone mining and fossil digging
- Shoot Out the Star target practice with BB machine guns
- Paint-A-Bug featuring three vintage Volkswagens, including a VW minibus
- Catch-A-Ducky and win a prize
- Ride-A-Dino featuring an animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex
- Hurricane Simulator that re-creates what it’s like in a 72 mph winds
- Oddities that include a mummified 10-foot-tall woman and a Neanderthal man
- Miniature Palisades Amusement Park
- Western town, including a jail
- Vintage penny arcade games
- And, finally, the gift shop within Meteor City’s geodesic dome
Dole Family Properties, which owns Crystal Cave in Springfield, Missouri; Mr. Putter’s Putt Putt in Atascadero, California, and other outdoor attractions, bought Meteor City for $50,000 last summer.
Michael and Joann Brown of Indiana bought the closed and vandalized property in 2017 for $20,000 with plans to eventually reopen it. But Michael died in 2022.
Meteor City’s geodesic dome has been there since 1979, but its days as a roadside business go back further.
A gas station operated on that site on U.S. 66 starting in 1938. The business itself then went through several expansions or reconstructions.
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