President Donald Trump gave a speech against the ‘cancel culture’ of the modern Twitter era at Mt. Rushmore.  Of course it was not without controversy.. Mt. Rushmore is the latest target of critics in the country who decry the original maker of the monument to be tied to the KKK, and the mountain itself to be a an indecent insult to Native Americans..

Even after the speech, supporters took to social media to applaud a patriot anti-cancel-culture speech.. those opposed raged, and called the speech racist and said it was mocking of indigenous people.

History isn’t pretty. But I guess we can try putting lipstick on the pig..

But one piece of news came from the event.. Trump announced that he is signing an executive order to make a brand new park that will feature statutes of “the greatest Americans to ever have lived”..

Of COURSE we know he will put himself the park!

Just as Trump announces a new park of heroes, it remains uniquely sad and equally creepy to know one such place is wasting away.. being eaten by weeds and vines, decay and time.. That place, if you didn’t hear, is in Virginia.

It’s called Presidents Park.

Here is the history: It was a ten-acre sculpture park and had an associated indoor museum formerly located in Williamsburg, Virginia in the United States. It contained 18 to 20 foot high busts of the Presidents of the United States from George Washington to George W. Bush.

It was opened around March 2004 and… well never did quite that well. It closed permanently in September 2010.

A Houston artist named David Adickes decided to come up with the idea when he was driving past Mt. Rushmore..

The park had a rocky start.. a rocky existence.. and finally a rocky closure.

People did not venture to the large park filled with giant presidential busts like Adickes would have hoped when he came up with the idea.

Instead, creditors put it up for sale just as the 2000-teens began. But it was quickly canceled..

In 2013, news was reported that Howard Hankins was moving the busts to a private storage..

This National Geographic account from 2017 ponders: Why is this field filled with huge presidents?

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As time goes on, this ‘Presidents Park’ has gotten more fame and notoriety since its closure!  Tourists have flocked to the decaying site not for years since closure.. People walking through the lonely and strange park taking photos and videos for posterity.

This was reported in August 2019 in the Virginia DAILY PRESS:

 They once occupied Presidents Park in York County, an attraction that could never sustain itself, and were slated to be destroyed about seven years ago.

Howard Hankins couldn’t bring himself to do that.
He’s since held out hope of finding them a permanent spot and returning them to the public eye. For years, they’ve sat inaccessible to almost everyone but industrial lot workers, bold trespassers and some lucky visitors who got permission to look, all while taking a beating from dirt, sun, rain and wind.

The presidents look like they came out on the wrong side of a street brawl, sporting a collection of broken noses, cracked chins and facades peeling like bad blisters, along with more than a few cranial holes.

That damage — and the power of social media — has given them yet another chance.

 

AFTER THE DEMISE

This cool video showcases what the abandoned park looked like in 2012, two years after its demise.

Years later, just months ago in 2020, CSPAN uploaded this video ..

After the park closed in 2010, the 15 to 18 foot, 18,000-20,000 pound statues were transported 12 miles to private property, where they have been decaying ever since. They met photographer, author and storyteller John Plashal, who leads walking tours and photography clinics at the location..

Some presidents are decaying at a faster rate than others. It seems that Woodrow Wilson is the biggest victim of that.. The video showcases how Wilson’s right eyeball is inhabited by a wasp’s nest.

 

Lyndon Johnson has lost the tip of his nose.

 

And Ronald Reagan was struck by lightning..

 

WHEN THINGS WERE HAPPIER

There was actually a time when news accounts were hopeful about this park!

Things seemed to be happy in 2004 when the park opened.

Things seemed to be .. ok … though the news reports at the time mentioned delays and an expensive back story. It was reported that if Bush lost the 2004 election, the sculptors would be quickly ready with a John Kerry bust.

 

A few months later, reports indicated that visitors were 90% positive about their experience at the strange park:

BUT FAST FOWARD A FEW YEARS and a few less visitors and profits than anticipated..

The Progress-Index in Virginia splashed this headline on September  20, 2010:

 

So we lament this grand display of presidential heads.. we lament its closing.. but we accept, and even welcome, its vast amount of creepiness.

Thank you to the creators.. but for creating the busts and the park, but for giving years of beauty in the strange aftermath of the closing.. the decomposing presidents, being struck by lightning, and being taken over by nature, right before our eyes.