Can you imagine walking through the countryside and suddenly come across a series of giant statues? In the Croaker region of Williamsburg, Virginia, this is perfectly possible.
At this address there are no less than 43 giant statues with busts of former US presidents. The effigies are between 5 and 6 meters high, and weigh 9 tons each, on average.
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The field where the giant statues are located currently belongs to the family of businessman Howard Hankins and, despite of looking like a scary place at first, it is actually a large collection of works by art.
An open-air museum
The giant heads are the work of Houston artist David Adickes, who, in turn, was inspired by Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota. In the place, there are also busts of presidents, only carved in the face of the mountain.
The former museum was opened to the public in 2004, in a partnership between the then owner, Everette “Haley” Newman, and David Adickes. However, 6 years later, in 2010, the place was deactivated.
According to historical data, the deactivation was due to the lack of public caused by the location of the museum, which is considered difficult to access. With that, the museum was deactivated and abandoned, until it was sold to Howard Hankins.
Nobody touches the presidents
After acquiring the former open-air museum, Howard Hankins was instructed to destroy the heads of 43 former US presidents. However, the businessman stated that he would not feel good if he did that, as he considered the monuments to be a part of the history of the United States of America. America.
Instead of destroying the huge effigies, the businessman decided to move them to his property, which is 20km from the museum's original site. The removal process took weeks and cost the businessman more than $50,000.
During the removal process, several statues were damaged. Therefore, nowadays anyone who sees them can notice that some do not have ears, noses and even parts of the head, in some cases.
A good example of the damage seen in giant busts is the statue of legendary former President Abraham Lincoln, who now has a huge hole in the back of his head.
The last resting place of these monuments to American democracy is owned by Howard Hankins and his family to this day. Because of this, there is no legal authorization to do mass tourism in the place.
However, even if it is not officially a tourist attraction, Presidents Park, or “Field of presidents”, is much visited by travelers who want to know this frighteningly fascinating.
Graduated in History and Human Resources Technology. Passionate about writing, today he lives the dream of acting professionally as a Content Writer for the Web, writing articles in different niches and different formats.