Roadside Attraction: Wally the Stegosaurus - Pittsfield, MA

Wally the Stegosaurus

Pittsfield, MA

N 42° 26.837 W 073° 15.238

Short Description: 

Wally the Stegosaurus is located outside the Berkshire Museum at 39 South Street in Pittsfield, MA

Long Description:

A life size, life-like and well travelled fiberglass statue of a stegosaurus, named Wally, prowls the grounds outside the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. The stegosaurus was a large, plant-eating dinosaur that roamed the western United States 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period.

Wally has greeted visitors to the Berkshire Museum since he was installed near the Museum entrance in October 1997. The fiberglass Stegosaurus was given to the museum by Carol and Tom McCann. He is 26 feet long, 12 feet tall, 7 feet wide, and weighs 1,200 pounds. A community-wide contest decided upon the name, Wally, after it became known that a Stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut.

Before coming to Pittsfield, Wally spent 30 years on the grounds of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Before that he went on tour around the United States. The first copy of Wally, made from the same mold, is on display at Dinosaur National Monument in Harper’s Corner, UT.

A sign next to Wally is inscribed:

STEGOSAURUS

Gift of Carol and Thomas McCann

Weighing up to two tons, stegosaurus lived 150

million years ago. Its name means "roofed or plated

lizard". This dinosaur roamed the wooded plains of

Utah, Wyoming and Colorado in small herds,

browsing on low plants. The plates on its back offered

some protection from predators, while also regulating

body temperature.

Fiberglass model created by

Louis Paul Jones Studios, Claverack, New York