With summer fast approaching, many of you are going to find yourselves out on vacation, looking for things to do while you’re away from it all. And if you’re a gearhead (and let’s face it: you are if you’re reading this), the mind will wander to finding an opportunity to find something to do that revolves around cool vehicles. I was in this exact situation a few weeks back while on vacation in the Outer Banks in North Carolina. While the area was amazing and the beaches pristine, I found myself looking for something to occupy my interest that involved cars, trucks, or anything gearhead-related. I whipped out the Google machine and started searching. Low and behold, I was within an hour from Monster Truck Mecca: a place called Digger’s Dungeon. Digger, as in the legendary GRAVE DIGGER.
Wait, WHAT?
Turns out that Dennis Anderson, the longtime driver of Grave Digger, was from the area, and he built a shop right on the side of one of the main routes to the Outer Banks. It’s part shop, part museum, and offers some other family things (like “monster truck” rides) and even a small diner on site. As a huge fan of all things Grave Digger since I saw the thing flying off dirt jumps and crushing rusty Oldsmobiles at the old Worcester Centrum in the early 1990’s, I had to check this place out.
You know you’ve arrived when you see the upended Grave Digger chassis on the side of the road among the landscaping. You can’t miss it. Trying to convince the wife that we need a display like this for the yard.
The main entrance is on the right side of the building. You enter the doors right under the pile of skulls, which dumps you right off in the gift shop.
About the gift shop: If you have seen anything out there with Grave Digger on it or resembling the famous monster truck, you’ll find it in here. What I was not expecting is the gift shop to be filled with other things, like side panels of competition trucks, race suits, and more. Even though this wasn’t the museum, it could have easily passed off as one with the amount of memorabilia inside.
An example of the memorabilia not for sale you’ll find in here are all of these Monster Jam trophies. Even though Monster Jam is part motorsport and part “sports entertainment” akin to Professional Wrestling, these were really cool to see. And there were seemingly hundreds of these things all over the place throughout the facility.
It makes me feel really old when a Playstation 2 game is considered a “vintage item”, but yeah, it tracks.
After paying the entry fee to see the actual museum, you sit in a small theater where a movie of Dennis Anderson gives you the lowdown of the Grave Digger story and what to expect inside, to the soundtrack of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and George Thorogood. My kind of place!
The first thing you see inside the door is a replica of Anderson’s shop when he was younger. I was tempted to pick up a ratchet and start wrenching on this old rig, but I’m sure that’s frowned upon.
Dennis Anderson says that the story of Grave Digger all started when a local guy he went to farmer school with needed a ride home, and offered to fill his car with gas from the guy’s family farm gas pump. That kicked off a friendship, and Dennis started working with him on the guy’s family farm. His project truck at the time was a 1951 Ford pickup and it was a bit rough around the edges and wearing red oxide primer. One day, some other guys with shiny new 4×4’s that were hanging out on the farm were giving Dennis the business about his old rig, and in defiance, he told them all that his truck would “dig their graves”. Getting a rise out of them, he then spray painted “Grave Digger” right on the door of the truck, and Grave Digger was born. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it!
This is the original Grave Digger, a 1951 Ford Anderson paid a whopping $50 for back in the early 80’s. He modded it with farm implement tires and a warmed over 327 making 375hp, and swapped in a trick transmission setup that consists of a TH400 with a manual trans bolted to that, which gives the rig TWENTY FOUR forward gears and SIX reverse gears. That’s bolted to a T200 transfer case, and with that combo, it had enough power and torque to drive over and/or climb just about everything in front of it. Sometime in 1982, a local promoter was putting on an early monster truck exhibition, and one of the featured trucks no-showed. Anderson took advantage of the opportunity and entered Grave Digger, which crushed cars in anger for the 1st time. The rest, as they say, is history.
The next version of Grave Digger was this blue-and-silver beast, which they call Legend. It’s another 1951 Ford, this time, a panel truck, just to be different. Anderson scored this one for $75 way back when, and modded it even further than his original rig to hang with the competition in early monster truck meets. This time around, he fitted bigger tires from another farm machine onto the truck, along with axles from a snow plow rig to take the abuse. He upped the ante and swapped in a 427 Big Block Chevy, backed by a TH400 and a transfer case out of a Deuce-and-a-Half. The paint and livery ended up on the truck because it was cheap! The farm he worked for had a fleet of trucks painted just like this, so he used some leftover paint from painting those and copied the livery for his truck.
This truck, which they call “Grandma”, is the first rig built to be what’s considered a “modern” Monster Truck. That means it has 66″x43″ tires, a rear engine setup, and more. It’s also the first Grave Digger with the iconic airbrushed graveyard scene on the sides of the truck. When it debuted in 1985, it looked like it broke straight out of hell to eat the competition! All of his main trucks since used this now-iconic livery.
The coolest part of Grandma is that it still sports an all-steel body. Yes, that’s a gaping rust hole. And that’s awesome.
When I visited the Dungeon, it was during the week and slightly off-season, so they weren’t doing some of the activities they typically do, like the monster truck rides. But, as a consolation, some of the employees were playing with this dirt jumper rig. The uncorked V8 had one of the lopiest cam profiles this side of a NHRA national event, which provided the perfect soundtrack to the visit. Put it this way: I could feel this thing idling through my eyeballs!
One of my favorite parts besides all of the amazing trucks and hardware was this old Zenith console TV playing loop after loop of vintage Grave Digger competitions. It made me feel like I was 7 again, hanging out in the family room on a Saturday afternoon, watching monster truck competitions on TNN. Note to self: acquire old console TV to replicate this experience at home.
Another cool thing to see for me was this side panel off of Grave Digger’s 25th Anniversary in 2007. On this year’s Monster Jam tour, they stopped in MA on Valentine’s Day, and I took my then-girlfriend (and now-wife) to see the show. She immediately gravitated toward Grave Digger, because who wouldn’t? We still have the commemorative T-shirts from that event. Still have the wife, too.
All over the place, as you would expect, there were mini replica Grave Digger trucks, from toys and RC trucks to battery powered ride-ons and even gas-powered go-karts. If I was a kid, I would have lost my mind seeing these! Also, that Dennis Anderson helmet… ridiculous.
To round out the experience, the last truck on display is literally Dennis Anderson’s last truck, affectionately called the “Last Ride”. This was the 35th anniversary rig, with the side graphics replicating the “Grandma” truck. At an event in Florida on the Monster Jam tour that year, Anderson wrecked hard in the Freestyle portion of the show and ended up getting hospitalized with a pancreatic injury. He was forced to call it a career, but what a career it was! His kids carry the torch he lit these days at Monster Jam events. This version of the truck sports a 540ci blown BBC making 1500hp, a long way from the 375hp SBC that powered that first rig.
Even the hallway on the way out of the museum is covered with memorabilia. Pretty much every Monster Jam event the truck competed in is in attendance here.
Another super cool part of the museum’s exit hallway are tons of amazing vintage advertisements for events all over the country. This one for an event in Maine caught my eye immediately, being from New England and all. After some sleuthing, we’re thinking this event took place over the July 4th weekend in 1993. Were you there?
If you are even remotely into monster trucks, and you find yourself in the area, this place is a must-visit. Even though my timing put me in the middle of the week and the activities on-site were limited to the museum, I could have spent an entire day looking at the old event ads alone! And if you have kids in tow, they will love the place, because what kid doesn’t love monster trucks? Digger’s Dungeon is 100% BangShift Approved!
