Galleta
Meadows is
a unique sculpture park of the Anza Borrego Desert, filled with dozens of metal
creatures that supposedly inhabited the area millions of years ago.
The Anza
Borrego Desert isn’t the most hospitable place on the North American continent,
and it’s definitely not where you’d expect to find an outdoor art exhibit like
Galleta Meadows. Owned by multimillionaire Dennis Avery (as in Avery office
supplies), this unusual tourist attraction is a desert creature park
open to anyone brave enough to face the desert and the unbearable heat that
comes with it.
The story
of Galleta Meadows began in the 90′s, when Avery decided to invest
some of his fortune in a vast territory in Borrego Springs. Ho got it for an
“uncontestable price” but had no idea of how he was going to use it, so he put
no barbwire around it and no “Private Property” signs. Later, he built a winter
residence, followed by a tourist resort, a country club and a golf course, but
he needed something unique to attract tourist to his newly opened facilities.
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Having
learned that the surrounding area had great archeological value, containing
fossil vestiges from Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Miocene, Avery decided to bet
on prehistoric creatures to lure tourists. He commissioned Mexican artist
Ricardo Arroyo Breceda to create metal sculptures of dinosaurs and other
creatures that might have lived in the area, and scatter them across Galleta
Meadows. Fast forward to present day, the metal menagerie envisioned by Dennis
Avery and crafted by Breceda features all kinds of animals, from mammoths, to
saber-toothed tigers, wild horses, turtles and even dinosaurs.
The
sculptures of Galleta Meadows are made of scrap metal and wire, which Ricardo
Breceda welds together and pounds into shape using hammers and sledgehammers.
Some of them, like the elephants and Gomphotherium are up to 4 meters tall.
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