It is a peculiar sight – Ronald Reagan has a large mark on his damaged face, George Washington is missing a piece of his nose, William Taft has a stain trailing from his eye to cheek, Millard Fillmore has a bee’s nest inside of his nose and Abraham Lincoln has a gigantic hole in the back of his head, eerily evoking his unfortunate fate.
This is just some of the damage on a few of the 43, 20ft-tall busts of former U.S. presidents that sit shoulder-to-shoulder in the most unlikely of places – a field on a farm in rural Croaker, Virginia.
It may only be two hours away from Washington DC, but it’s a world away from the nation’s capital.
Titled the Presidents’ Heads by creator David Adickes, the larger-than-life sculptures have become an eerie sight on businessman Howard Hankins property in Croaker.
The derelict statues that weigh up to 20,000 lbs each were once part of the now-failed Presidents’ Park in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The park was a collaboration between Adickes and landowner Everette ‘Haley’ Newman. They pair opened it in 2004 with hopes that it would attract thousands of visitors yearly after they invested $10million of their own money for it.
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But it did not attract the hordes of visitors they wished for partly due to its poor location behind a motel off I-64 and being located far from Colonial Williamsburg.
The Presidents’ Park shut down in 2010 with the land being sold off. Newman enlisted the help of Hankins to have the statues, worth an estimated $6.5 million in total according to Adickes, demolished.
‘When they asked me to get rid of them, I immediately starting thinking of how I could move them without destroying them,’ Hankins, who had helped to construct the Presidents Park, told Richmond.com.
Instead of demolishing them, Hankins paid $50,000 to move the busts to his 400-acre pastoral farm in Croaker for safe-keeping once he figured out what to do with them.
In 2016, Hankins came up with the idea to create his own Presidential Historic Park featuring the busts along with other attractions.
We’ve heard about this before, and it’s still sad. Long story with lots of pictures somewhat shorter, the Hankins plan didn’t work out, and the fabled Giant Presidential Heads have fallen into disrepair. The pictures are actually kind of disturbing, and more than a little sad for a dedicated fanboy like me. Demolishing them would have been a kinder fate. I suppose they could still have use as props in a dystopian future TV show or movie – I bet the Walking Dead folks could work them in – but really, they deserved better. At least there are some others that are still out there, doing their thing in a more dignified fashion.
Since it appears the “if you build it, they will come” strategy failed, the best option, to me, would be to hawk individual busts to the states where the presidents are from. Maybe the respective presidential libraries would be interested in having the bust of their president on the grounds?
It does seem like a shame to have them languish out in the middle of nowhere. I always thought the busts we have in Houston were in a weird place, but at least thousands of motorists a day have an opportunity for a quick glance at ours.