Jim Stingl

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Since the early 1970s, a 16-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus rex menaced mini-golfers and then stood guard at Johnson's Park long after the amusement empire went out of business.

Now, it's in pieces and sleeping on two mattresses in Chad Covert's backyard.

The Saukville man paid just $11 at auction for the tired old dinosaur, which you've seen many times if you drive on N. 76th St. north of Good Hope Road.

Covert plans to restore the gentle giant and give it a permanent home in his 5-acre yard. The eyes will light up like they used to, thanks to a solar panel he'll install.

"I don't do anything half-assed. It will be better than it was," he said.

Dinosaur moving day at the old amusement park was earlier this month, and it arrived with single-digit cold and a fierce wind.

You might think of a mini-golf obstacle as plywood and glue. This one was 13,000 pounds of permanence held tight to the ground with solid concrete legs and tail.

"We had seven guys for seven hours out there with two trucks," Covert said. "It wasn't meant to be moved."

But the T. rex did eventually cooperate with some convincing from saws, torches, sledgehammers and cranes. It helped that Covert has a friend at Gierach's Service in Mequon, which supplied the tow trucks and a couple dinosaur wrestlers.

The tail, one leg and one arm became disconnected in the process, but the torso is largely intact except for some abdominal injuries. The creature, and the bone it leaned on all these years, was constructed from a metal frame covered with wire mesh coated in concrete.

John Kohlwey worked at Johnson's Park, 7350 N. 76th St., for a few years after finishing high school. He and others built the dinosaur in the early 1970s.

"The scales were actually made one by one. The concrete was packed onto the back of a triangular trowel and then was flipped onto the dinosaur," said Kohlwey, who is now retired and living in Chippewa Falls.

Other dinosaurs almost just like this one still are part of Goony Golf courses in Chattanooga, Tenn., Spring Lake Park, Minn., and Lake George, N.Y. Johnson's Park was a Goony Golf franchise and was provided specifications for building the dinosaur, Kohlwey said.

He thinks Johnson's Park first opened in the 1960s, operated by brothers John and Oscar Johnson. It started with go-carts, he said, and expanded to mini-golf, a skating rink, giant slide, bumper cars, batting cages and an arcade.

The northwest side Milwaukee neighborhood eventually was plagued with economic instability and crime, and by the late 1990s the park closed. The situation was made worse when Johnson Kart Inc., an offshoot of Johnson's Park that made and sold go-carts, was hit with a huge punitive jury verdict after a woman was burned to death at a Florida amusement park using Johnson go-carts.

Much of Johnson's Park was demolished in 2007, according to a Facebook page devoted to its memory. Still, the trusty dinosaur just kept standing there.

The City of Milwaukee took ownership of the Johnson's Park property last year after the owner failed to pay more than $250,000 in taxes over four years, city records show. It's assessed at $1.3 million.

Growing up in Cedarburg, Covert has fond memories of golfing and racing at Johnson's Park. It was a popular place where people felt comfortable dropping off their kids.

Now 43, he has worked at various car dealerships on the same stretch of N. 76th St. He came to know John Johnson and offered him as much as $2,000 for the dinosaur so he could put it on display at work to catch the eyes of potential customers passing by. Johnson said yes twice, but later backed out.

A friend told Covert about the auction in December. He beat out another bidder at $10. He also bought 15 go-carts, a couple to keep for his kids and others to resell.

Offers are coming in already to help restore the fragmented and multi-colored dino. The work will happen when the weather warms up. Covert is open to suggestions about what to name his new backyard tenant.

Why not the front yard?

"I could put it closer to the front," he said, "but I don't want two years from now to be sitting on my porch and going, 'Why did I put that thing there?' "

Contact Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or jstingl@jrn.com. Connect with my public page at Facebook.com/Journalist.Jim.Stingl