Mountainburg, AR Photo - Dinosaur Statue in Mountainburg, Arkansas

Dinosaur statue in Mountainburg, Arkansas, a thriving community during the pre-Interstate highway days when U.S. Highway 71 was the primary route between Fayetteville in Northwest Arkansas and Fort Smith in the Arkansas River Valley to the south. This T-rex stands in Mountainburg City Park, along with a brontosaurus. The reptiles were designed and constructed in 1980 by local resident Douglas Birchfield at the request of city leaders after they saw another dinosaur he built nearby to cheer up a family member who was in poor health.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.