Steggie II Stegosaurus

Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Animals and creatures

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

Steggie II is a fiberglass Stegosaurus at the Wade Oval entrance of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in University Circle. It replaced the original Steggie, which was installed in 1968 and retired in 1997. The museum gives the original's size as 18 feet long and 8 feet tall.

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Steggie II Stegosaurus

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Site-level location · 41.5117° N, 81.6130° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has greeted visitors with a fiberglass stegosaurus since 1968, though the one there now is the second.

The original Steggie was introduced in June 1968 at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's Dinosaur Days Children's Carnival. The museum says it was modeled after a Stegosaurus made for the New York World's Fair earlier in the decade, and describes it as 18 feet long and 8 feet tall. A 2020 iBerkshires report says the original was made by Louis Paul Jonas Studios in Hudson, New York. When the museum retired it in 1997 and installed Steggie II, the original moved to the Berkshire Museum, where it was renamed Wally. Cleveland's replacement was cast from the original casts, according to a 2020 report.

Steggie II is hollow fiberglass. In 2016 it was craned onto a flatbed and taken to Creative Mold and Machine in Newbury Township for repairs: one of its 17 dermal plates had broken off and there were cracks to fix. The Geauga County Maple Leaf reported a weight of about 850 pounds; Ideastream called it a half-ton dinosaur and put its height at 10 feet, against the museum's 8 feet for the original. Ideastream reported that it would return that April repainted with a mostly red body and a pale underbelly; the Maple Leaf, which gave its former colour as grayish, described the new colours as orange and tan. A museum preparator told Ideastream there is no fossil evidence for the colour; the scheme reflects the idea that dinosaurs are ancestors of birds.

The Maple Leaf also reported that workers found a trap door in its side with a toy-sized stegosaurus inside, and that how it got there is a mystery.

The museum's website lists the museum as open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm.

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PRACTICAL

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WHAT TO EXPECT

Outdoor dinosaur statue at the museum's Wade Oval entrance, outside the ticketed galleries. The museum's website lists regular hours of 10am to 5pm Tuesday to Sunday, closed Monday (checked 20 October 2026). Children have long climbed on it, according to a 2016 report.

ACCESS

Outside the Cleveland Museum of Natural History entrance on Wade Oval, University Circle, Cleveland. The museum, at 1 Wade Oval Drive, is open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm. Check with the museum before visiting outside those hours.

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