This is an Industrial Recycling area. He owned as much as 600 acres here. He has partitioned off some of that to a nearby golf course. This is a small sliver of what is remaining. The significance of that is he was involved with the creation of the original president s park. It is five miles from here. It was open from 20042010. It was home to all 42 of these sculptures. He was instrumental in commissioning to come take these when that park went bankrupt. He put them in his stone crusher. He did not have the heart to do that and spent a considerable amount of his own money to transport everyone of these from that park 12 miles from here to his property here to store them temporarily until he figured out what he wanted to do with them. The sculptor of all of these is david adicks. Alive, he was a painter based out of houston. He became so inspired by Mount Rushmore that he wanted to recreate them on a smaller scale. He ended up creating all three sets of them. One of them went to a park in south dakota, which is also abandoned. He has a set himself in his now defunct studio in houston. This was the third set. It was in the park and it is now here in this little town. Here we are nine years later and you can see that all of them experienced a significant amount of decay. As a result, they have become this internet sensation. Theyve not become this popular because they are falling apart, but i suspect that has something to do with it. So here they sit in this field. We now have people who come down to see them. Mr. Hankins has been generous to allow us this opportunity. They were offlimits for a number of years. When they originally were moved here, he wanted the public to enjoy them. He kept it open for everyone to come down. The problem was they were Young Children climbing on them. The liability was a mess. So it became completely private. The only people getting here were trespassers. I proposed something to him that would allow the public to enjoy them that would protect him legally in the form of a waiver form and a modest entrance fee for the walking tour. That is getting ready to occur here in about an hour. We also have separate evening photo shoots. It has been a wonderful thing so far. We are at a standstill now until we figure out what the future of these will be. They were originally slated to go somewhere in the northeast. That has temporarily been put on hold. There are all kinds of other proposals on the table for people who either want to buy them, move them, or possibly even create a studio here. Until there is some clarity to that situation, on random weekends, i conduct tours. People are able to enjoy this. Does anyone know what his nickname was . Why did they call him old hickory . Because he was tough. He was one bad dude. The interesting thing it was kind of an engineering feat or as to how he move them. Despite the fact that these are hollow, they are anywhere from 17,000 to 22,000 pounds. Not that many people would find that easy to transport. Even though it was only 12 miles. What he ended up doing is that every one of these president s as le intentionally put in the top of their head. The purpose of that was to expose the steel in the skeleton. It allowed one of his excavators to gain enough purchase of lift to be able to put it onto a flatbed full of tires. Then they strapped them down and moved them here one by one. Not all of these are the same size. There are 42 of them here. The sculptor decided he wanted to make seven of them grander than the remaining 35. That is because he thought it would be neat to recognize the unquote, vip president s. These are the seven that he identified through interviewing historians, president ial experts, academics, history teachers and such, who they thought were the seven most influential president s. That is why they are 25 larger than the remaining 35. It was pretty easy for him to go and take the 35 smaller ones and move them here and stack them in rows of 11. For some reason, Thomas Jefferson, who i think deserves to be in the front, got stuck in the back. That is for reasons that are unbeknownst to me. He is the only vip president two is not in the front room. The problem he encountered was when he got to the larger president s, one excavator would not work. He had to use two. To then stack the larger ones in front, starting with woodrow riesling woodrow fdr, butoosevelt and then he realized that if he took the final three, washington, jackson, and lincoln, it would be obscured by the remaining ones. So he had to pick and choose which three he wanted to come up front. These are the three. We will talk about why a moment. That is why the schematic and the order occurred. It is not chronologic. It is fairly random. Most of the smaller ones are set back and the larger ones are upfront. George is one of the favorites. He was born around 95 miles from here. He was a redhead. Powdered his hair. He was a distillery of whiskey and the father of the american foxhound. He had up to 30 different foxhounds. Two of which were named drunkard and tipsy. He had an intense fear of being buried alive. That was not terribly uncommon in the 1700s. People were dying of things like and some of cholera these people were prematurely buried. So he lived with that intense fear. He will never be outranked militarily. He was also the only president to never live in the white house. It wasnt until john adams came around to where he began to occupy the white house. He did die of a throat infection. They were bloodletting him. , tis well. Ds were it was andrew who actually, it was the only sculpture he attempted to clean up. He was trying to clean up some decay on his cheek. Andrew jackson, he spent most of his life with a scar on his cheek because when he was a young man, he took a sword to the face from a soldier. That was after president jackson refused to shine his boots. He died with a couple of bullets in his chest, not from being shot, but had engaged several duels. In gun the other interesting fact about president jackson was he parrottly taught his pet how to swear. That sometimes became problematic in the white house. People often ask me, they understand why Abraham Lincoln and George Washington are up front. But they question why jackson is front and center. All three of these are on dollar bills. People suspect that Thomas Jefferson or fdr should probably be front and center here with these three. I dont disagree with that. I finally asked the owner why Andrew Jackson was here. His response to me was very interesting. He said, he has really pretty hair and i like his epaulets. Hey does have nice hair. And he does have nice hair. I started doing these tours and talking about legitimate president ial accomplishments. People were not entertained. Then i started saying how Andrew Jacksons parrot sweared and people love that stuff. People love to hear the silly odd stuff. President lincoln, the tallest of all the president s at 64. Shortest was james madison, who was 54 and 99 pounds. President lincoln was obviously assassinated in the ford theater. He actually predicted his death from a dream he had had the night before. Grant was supposed to have been his guest that night and had to bail out at the last minute. On his desk in the oval office was legislation to create the , albeit not for president ial protection, primarily for counterfeiting. I thought that was ironic. He was also a worldclass wrestler. Supposedly wrestled in over 300 matches, losing only one of them. Someone told me he is enshrined in the World Wrestling hall of fame. I thought that was interesting. Coincidentally, i want to show you something over here. Of all 42 sculptures, the only spill off of the flatbed was abe. That hole in the back of his head was unintentional. That occurred when he fell off the flatbed. The remaining 39 statues are clustered together in this patch of grass. In the summertime, you cannot even see the right side of this cluster because it is so overgrown. A problem with that because it obscured a lot of them. Then we realized it made for and almost like this haunted forest you could walk through. It finally became so overwhelming that the groundskeeper came and took it all down. It is beginning to grow back right now. Some of the president s here are obscured by weed and other dead grass that is growing up. This is james buchanan. He is the only of all the president s to kinda be staring down. Most all of them are staring straight at you. He has this look where the angle of his head is looking right down at you. Whether it is the day or at night, this is kind of a super creepy feeling that makes me uneasy. Someone also once told me that he was the only president to never marry. I thought that was interesting. The bearded president s, hayes, grant, garfield, they all to me looked kind of similar. You can tell that all of the neckwear from every sculpture is time specific. There is some military garb with grant where he has some stars on his shoulders. If you go down to george bush elephants on his tie. James garfield, from what i have read, had an interesting talent where he could write with one whilen latin simultaneously writing with his other hand in greek. Is sometimes difficult for people to recognize. I do not know why. I think he is pretty true to form. He sits there in the back and he looks fairly young. Gerald ford is right next to him. The interesting thing is he was the most difficult of all of the sculptures to create. His features are so unpronounced. President lincoln was the easiest because his features are so pronounced. Thomas jefferson is the third most decayed president here. He is starting to follow the bad. Fall apart pretty he died on the same day as adams, on july 4, which i thought was interesting. Days in the summer, we allow our guests to walk through here. But you can see this area is pretty wet. We have had significant weather here lately. We have never seen snakes back here. But it looks like an area that is completely conducive to snakes. Sure our guests are mindful of that. Theres all kind of different whether, and the neatest thing i have seen is a bald eagle circling georges head. Here during out electrical storms at night, and it has looked like lightning strikes were coming out of fdrs mouth. I have not been out here in the wintertime but i know people would like to photograph this in the snow. That would be exciting, and fog would be the perfect element to see these and experience them. This is one of my personal favorites. This is fdr. He died in his fourth term. He was supposedly a victim of polio. Somed somewhere that physicians nowadays are not convinced that he had polio. Rather that he had gone barre syndrome. Polio either a victim of or purportedly had it come and because he was such a high profile individuals, a lot of people say thousands of lives were saved because of the acceleration of the timeline and the appropriation of funds for the vaccine that was created, which i thought that was interesting. This is george bush junior. He is also highly decayed. You can see where hes got these elephants on his tie. The most decayed president is woodrow wilson. Pretty much looks like he has leprosy. The question always comes up, is there a rhyme or reason why these guys are decaying faster than the remaining . I just dont understand if there is any reason behind it. Perhaps he is in a wind pattern or rain pattern that makes him more sick septa but to cracking. Susceptible to cracking. If you look pretty closely at this president , who was one of eight virginian president s, look into his right eyeball. That is a wasps nest. Oftentimes you will see them in the nostrils of the sculpture. A few of them are starting to miss some parts. Johnson is losing the end of his nose. Ronald reagan was struck by lightning a few years back. Probably the most difficult president to identify his back here behind reagan. No one has ever gotten this right. I had to really starting study hard to figure that out. That is warren harding. Behind him is john adams, who is hard to see because of all of the overgrowth. That neatest fact i have come across through a lot of my research is ronald reagan, when he was asked what his proudest accomplishment was in life, it had nothing to do with his presidency. Nor his acting career. His proudest accomplishment was he claimed to have saved 77 lives when he was a young man as a lifeguard. The question always comes up, will obama ever be here . The answer to that question is, the goal for the original park was every time a president was to come into office, that a two foot tall prototype was going to be made as a sample and then brought fullscale. When obama was coming into office, they approached the owner of the park at the time who had already recognized the financial difficulties, and he declined to go fullscale. They kept a little miniature who lived in this green shipping container along with a miniature white house. That was for many years. Was here students that for eight night workshop decided that when i left, he came back in the sole. And stole him. Not go over very well at all. This whole place is rigged with security cameras. We figured out who stole him. He claimed to have had a weak moment, and he brought the statue back. So we keep him under lock and very importantis and we do not want him stolen again. Is there a trump . No. But the owner has bought a little baby one. The reason i got involved with profession,econdary i am a photographer and i specialize in abandoned structures. If it is decaying, to me it is interesting. That hobby turned into an instagram following, and then that turned into a coffee table book. It started going viral. They ended up putting me on faculty as an adjunct speaker. When i got free time on the weekends, they send me around the state as a storyteller. All of these beautiful places have stories behind them. The public really enjoys hearing the back story. I started doing that for the museum. I recognized how much the public loved that. Then i started doing professional storytelling. That started in libraries. It escalated into theaters. Now i do them at the actual abandoned places themselves. I approached the owner about that and told him i could protect them legally and make him some money to go back into his foundation. That allowed the public to enjoy these, so he allows me to do that. It is just kind of blossomed ever since. This is by far the most spectacular. You guys have been great. Any questions . You have until 4 00. Why are you attracted to abandoned and decaying places . I love the texture, the mood, the mystery. I love the social part about it, and to me, the challenge of going out into the community, walking into fire stations, interviewing people. Hanging out in diners. What started as a simple hobby to grow a instagram following has quickly graduated into a strong devotion allowing virginians to have a deeper experience with their past. music tonight, a look at american join us today at 6 00 p. M. For the results of the nevada caucuses. From joend speeches biden and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and amy klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and tom steyer and your calls, live coverage on cspan ondemand at cspan. Org or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Next, from the kansas city public library, coauthors talk about their book. It focuses on world war ii prisoners of war and concentration camps. Good evening. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you to the u. S. Army command and general staff. One of our favorite programming partners for yet another of what i know will be a compelling presentation. These guys are money. As many of you know. We are so fortunate and privileged to be associated with them