unveiled a brand new modern museum building and other updates to house, in some order or theme, most of the items formerly stored in the three sheds. The new owners have also added a new alien and dinosaur theme that visitors first encounter upon entering the museum. In addition to the upgrades, the cost of admission has also increased to $5 per person or $10 per family. Origins The step-great-great-grandson of Homer Tate and the curator of the Arizona Historical Society-Pioneer Museum in Flagstaff has said that this was created by Homer Tate. Tate was famous for producing sideshow gaffes. Based out of Phoenix, Tate produced a variety of curiosities like faux shrunken heads. The roadside area was the creation of attorney Thomas Binkley Prince, who was born in Texas in 1913. Prince attended Arizona State University and became a lawyer, practicing law for a time in Phoenix, Arizona. But soon he and his wife Janet moved to the Mojave Desert on Highway 91 and opened their first Thing roadside attraction and curio shop, between Barstow and Baker. However, the expansion of the road into an interstate highway brought about the loss of the building, and in 1965 the Prince family packed up The Thing and moved to the current location in Arizona. Prince chose the location to be near Texas Canyon, a site that he had become "enchanted" with. A heart condition and several strokes led to Prince's death in 1969 at the age of 56. Janet ran the attraction for several years, but eventually relocated to Baltimore. The origin of The Thing was established by Syndicated columnist Stan Delaplane, who interviewed Janet Prince in 1956. Prince told him, "[A] man came through here about six years ago. He had three of [the bodies] he got somewhere. He was selling them for $50." Today, the attraction is operated by an Albuquerque-based company, Bowlins, Inc., which owns several roadside trading posts throughout the Southwest. Advertisement and popularity The Thing is heavily advertised via billboards that dot the interstate. A popular, albeit untrue, legend states that the billboards stretch from New Orleans to Los Angeles. Mike Bowlin, the owner of the site in 1993, noted that the billboards realistically "start around El Paso to the east and somewhere on I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson to the west." RoadsideAmerica.com claims that over 247 billboards, spread out over a span of 200 miles,