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By Gerald M. Gay | Arizona Daily Star
The Thing, the mystery creature and highway travel center that has served as one of Southern Arizona’s most popular roadside attractions since the mid-1960s, gets bigger this weekend.
On Saturday, Bowlin Travel Centers, which owns the property about an hour east of Tucson off Interstate 10, will launch a new museum revolving around the The Thing’s origin story in a recently constructed 12,000-square-foot facility connected to its gift shop.
The museum rolls out an elaborate tale, involving aliens battling dinosaurs and influencing historical human events from the rise of the ancient empires of Egypt and Greece to the American Revolution to World War II.