The Great Statues of Auburn are true roadside colossi, and represent an eclectic mix of subjects -- ranging from Amazon archers, to a coolie pushing a wheelbarrow, to a nude man wrestling with chains. To say that they are larger-than-life size is an understatement: the biggest is 42 feet tall and weighs over 120 tons.
The statues are unadvertised, which only adds to your initial shock when they loom into view. A few stand in a parking lot of an otherwise ordinary street. The parking lot belongs to the office of the dentist who built the statues, Ken Fox.
Fox began raising his statues in the late '60s, as a political statement. For the first few years the town was against him, even rerouting its school busses out of eyesight. Tempers have since cooled, and now a 45-ton gold miner by Fox stands in Old Town Auburn, commissioned and paid for by its citizens.
