Virtual Family Kingdom - Wild West

Wild West Land - Game Story Board

Once a prospector known as Arthur Lakes and his dog Quarry Tin found a beautiful spot on the banks of a dry river bed and decided to build a town. He named it Quarry Tin after his dog.

Everyone flocked to his town and soon it was a thriving haven filled with happy people.

There were large bones everywhere sticking out of the sand and folks in the town used them for all sorts of things. The fence next to the general store was made of the bones, and also some hitching posts, and Arthur even built a table using the bones as legs.

One day, the sky grew black as night and a terrible thunderstorm struck the town. Lightning zigzagged in great bolts to the ground striking many of the houses.

After the thunderstorm, things began to get weird! Old Widow Smith said she saw Arthur’s table climbing up the hill outside of town. She also said she saw the fence and hitching posts following it, but everyone thought she was crazy until they saw it themselves.

Everyone fled the town that very day leaving all their belongings behind. Now anyone who stops in the town tells of how the ghosts of giant lizards roam through the deserted town of Quarry Tin and scare away anyone brave enough to set foot in it.

You may believe that you are brave enough to face the giant ghost dinosaurs of Quarry Tin, but there is only one way to find out for sure…

The Real Story of Arthur Lakes, Quarry 10 and the Dinosaur Graveyard

Quarry 10 is really not the name of Arthur Lake’s dog, but it is the name of an actual archaeological dig site in Colorado with a rich history. It has some of the highest concentrations of dinosaur remains ever discovered. Back in 1877, Arthur Lakes, a real life teacher and free-lance geologist of the time, found a dinosaur graveyard filled with enormous bones unlike anything he had seen before.

He attempted to get the support of Yale by writing to their resident dinosaur specialist, Othniel Charles Marsh. Marsh only vaguely replied to Lakes’ offer of his discovery and services and eventually stopped corresponding, so Lakes wrote to Edward Drinker Cope, the editor of American Naturalist, and Marsh’s bitter rival in the arena of dinosaur discovery.

These two chief dinosaur authorities of the time had a long standing well publicized feud with each man attempting to spend the most money, make the biggest discoveries and have the best archeologists working for them.

When Marsh heard that Cope might be interested in Lakes’ discovery, he promptly hired Lakes to excavate the dig for him. This triggered a new level of underhandedness in their ongoing skirmish for dinosaur supremacy.

Acting like sworn enemies, the two feuding dinosaur specialists and their followers terrorized and sabotaged each other’s digs and camps. Despite the feud, however, Marsh and Cope together were responsible for naming over 1,500 new species of prehistoric animals. This included starting the famous snafu over the wrong head being placed on the body of the brontosaurus, Marsh’s mistake, which has caused numerous misconceptions. Together they sparked the vivid fascination and ongoing dinomania which has gripped the world over the years and continues strong today.

It was told that Lakes dynamited the Quarry 10 site to bury its remaining prehistoric treasures under rubble thus discouraging any excavation by his boss’s rival Cope. Evidence at the site which has been rediscovered over a century and a quarter after Lakes left it, however, doesn’t show signs of any dynamiting and in fact merely indicates that Lakes’ crew only shoveled some dirt onto the site to disguise it.

Quarry 10 has been reopened and true to its history is again revealing its ancient secrets to the world and providing ongoing insights into the life and times of dinosaurs.