“If you get to the traffic light at Grove St. and Maple Avenue, make a right coming from Kings Highway, that’s where the dinosaur site was found,” Haddonfield resident DeForest “Butch” Brees has been heard to say.
The former Scoutmaster is the father of Chris Brees, who created a plaque commemorating the site in 1984 for his Eagle Scout project.
“My son was looking for an Eagle Scout project, and we went to the library to see if we could find where the dinosaur was found,” Brees recalled. ” … Everybody had a different opinion on where the dinosaur was found.”
After a lot of research, they were able to find the site and create a plaque. Butch Brees described it as ground zero in the study of modern paleontology, since it was the world’s first nearly completed dinosaur.
“I found out that this dinosaur was found there, and there really wasn’t a lot written about it,” remembered Chris Brees. “Nobody really knew the whole story, so I kind of thought it’d be good to set the record straight and educate people about what happened a long time ago.”
Tthe site was declared a national landmark in 1993.
The Hadrosaurus foulkii site at the end of Maple Avenue features the plaque, a diagram and an informational pamphlet.
According to an article by Jennifer Ves for the blog of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the dinosaur was found after a mining crew uncovered dinosaur fossils in the sediment it was excavating. But the original find of the full skeleton was by Joseph Leidy in 1858.
One of the interesting facts he found was that the skull was never found, but Chris Breese had heard from people that bones were found beforehand and used as doorstops and mantel pieces.
This year marks the 40th year of the site’s official citing, recognized with Chris Brees’ Eagle Scout plaque as well as the familiar bronze sculpture of a Hadrosaurus on Kings Highway. The 21st birthday of “Haddy” – as the sculpture is fondly known – wil be marked on Friday, Oct. 18, from 4 to 9 p.m. along Kings Highway. There will be a commemorative ceremony the next day at noon.
The sculpture of what is officially known as the Hadrosaurus foulkii represents a dinosaur skeleton that was found in October 1858 by John E. Hopkins on his farm in Haddonfield. It was the first dinosaur skeleton to ever be mounted.
At that time, Chris Brees and his father met in the Darwin Room of the Drexel University science academy, where the bones of the Hadrosaurus foulkii are kept today. The academy provided funding for Chris’ plaque.
Since the site has been established, the Brees family has kept an eye on it. There is a table with a row of toy dinosaurs there and a small area with informational pamphlets. The family has been tracking visitors since 1998; it is anticipated the site has had 7,800 visitors since.
In the early 2000s, Butch Brees found out there was a committee formed and that the garden club had undertaken improvements on Lantern Lane, Chestnut Street and Kings Highway. That led him to think maybe a sculpture of the dinosaur could be created not far from where the home of local sculptor John Giannotti.
By selling pavers on Lantern Lane, the club was able to raise the funds needed to sculpt the dinosaur, which was presented in 2003.
Mayor Colleen Bianco Bezich remembered that the event was one she had once envisioned.
“Heritage tourism is so important in a town like ours,” she noted, “so this event came after two years of connecting with various partners and identifying different dates and ideas that we could build around the Hadrosaurus.”
Haddy’s birthday celebration will feature a showing of the film “Jurassic Park” in Kings Court at dusk, a pet costume contest where entrants are encouraged to dress up their pups like dinosaurs or other Jurassic Park characters, a sensory friendly dinosaur play zone and a parade through the court.
