Presidents Park, South Dakota

A few miles north of Mount Rushmore, another cluster of presidential heads lurks in the woods, unvisited, at Presidents Park, an attraction that closed in 2010. Here twenty foot tall busts of 43 presidents (up to the second Bush) are arranged along a winding path, behind a closed gate, slowly falling apart. The heads were made by the larger than life artist David Adickes, known for his fifty foot-tall Sam Houston Monument, next to the interstate in his hometown of Huntsville, Texas. He was initially inspired to make the presidential heads after visiting Mount Rushmore, and was later commissioned to make them all by the developers of Presidents Park, five miles outside of Deadwood, in the Black Hills. The park opened in 2003, but lasted only a few years before going out of business. This was one of two complete sets of president busts of this scale that Adickes made. The other is near Norge, Virginia. That set was commissioned for a Presidents Park in Williamsburg, Virginia, which opened in 2004. It too went out of business in just a few years. Those heads were trucked off site and are now decomposing next to a commercial mulching operation. Other stray presidential heads made by David Adickes are scattered around, here and there. Reagan, George W. Bush and JFK are clustered next to the highway and a drive-in in Hermosa, South Dakota, and a giant Eisenhower looms over the interstate outside his birthplace at Denison, Texas. More are sometimes visible through the fence at David Adickes studio in Houston.