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Photos from the Ruins of President’s Park

The photos from my October trip to Williamsburg are now on the site in the Photography Gallery, 2023.

President’s Park was a ten-acre sculpture park and associated indoor museum formerly located in Williamsburg, Virginia in the United States. It contained 18-to-20-foot (5.5 to 6.1 m) high busts of the presidents of the United States from George Washington to George W. Bush.

The statues were sculpted by Houston artist David Adickes, who was inspired as he drove past Mount Rushmore when returning from a trip to Canada. The park was opened in March 2004 by local visitor attraction entrepreneur Everette H. "Haley" Newman III, who had been slowly taking delivery of the busts since 2000.

The park had financial troubles and was closed on September 30, 2010. Creditors put the park up for auction (not including the busts) on September 28, 2012, after a foreclosure auction originally scheduled for April 26, 2012 was cancelled without explanation. By7 January 10, 2013, the busts had been moved to private storage at a nearby local farm in Croaker, Virginia by Howard Hankins. In 2017, National Geographic showcased a video in which Mr Hankins expresses a hope to rehabilitate the statues for a park in the future.

Overall, I’d say I was a little disappointed but still glad that I went. The heads were all crammed together so you couldn’t get shots of the front of each one. Plus, there were lots of people so I had to wait patiently for them to get out of the scene so I could take a photo. The grounds were muddy, but fortunately we were warned so I had on mud boots. Nevertheless, I got some good shots.