The Crossing

Bronze public statuary installation intended to attract heritage tourism to Round Rock, Texas. Marks a stream crossing on the Chisholm Trail.

Round Rock, Texas, traces its origins to a stream crossing on the Chisholm Trail, which was an important route for driving Texas longhorn cattle to central Kansas railroad towns en route to market from 1867 until 1884, when barbed-wire fences and cattle disease quarantine laws ended the long cattle drives. North of Austin, cowboys traveling on that infamous cattle trail often camped beside Brushy Creek. The Village of Brushy Creek was later renamed Round Rock in honor of the round limestone rock that marked the popular Brushy Creek crossing – a large chunk of which broke off in a 1907 flood.

In the mid-1990s, the tourism committee of the Round Rock Chamber of Commerce turned to bronze public sculpture as a way to attract historical tourism, inspired by sculptor Robert Summers’ Texas-sized bronze art installation featuring three life-sized cowboys driving forty longhorn cattle in Dallas’ 4.2-acre Pioneer Plaza.

Initial plans for a life-size statue of a cowboy and three steers crossing Brushy Creek near I-35 soon hit a snag. The chamber’s tourism committee worried that flooding in the creek could cause major damage to the proposed $100,000 statue. A revised plan placed the bronze cattle in a parklike setting with convenient adjacent landscaped parking likely to appeal to the outlet mall shoppers and suburban residents that Round Rock sought to attract. From there, plans for bronze work expanded dramatically. By September 1996, Chamber members envisioned a bronze cattle drive featuring some twenty steers, and perhaps a stagecoach and horses, that would rival Dallas’ Pioneer Plaza cattle herd installation and the wild horses surrounding Las Colinas’ fountain.

Chambers operations manage and tourism director Michelle Rackley insisted that “The statues would not only pull tourists to the area, it would be a claim for Round Rock pride . . . This will be something original. It will be ours.”^[1] But, like many other pioneer statues erected to attract tourists, the Round Rock installation borrowed heavily from other communities’ monuments.

The Chamber commissioned local cowboy art sculptor Jim Thomas to erect a series of 150%-life-sized bronze statues of pioneer figures and livestock. Sponsored by local families, each of the statues in The Crossing honored specific individuals even as they depicted broader groups of cowboys, pioneer women and children, and Longhorn cattle.

By 2008, Red Rock had installed a Pioneer Woman and Pioneer Boy and four longhorn steers. Although referred to under generic titles, Jim Thomas’ figures were intended to depict Harriet “Hattie” Cluck, the first woman to travel the Chisholm Trail, and her five-year-old son Emmett. Donor Sissy Peckham served as a face model for the 1,200-pound statue. The unusually styled depiction of a sunbonneted Pioneer Mother and her young son stand facing each other, leaning on matching walking sticks. She carries a small tote of foodstuffs, while her son shows off a frog he has caught in the streambed. Longhorn steers lounge nearby. Two of those steers commemorated Swedish and Mexican immigrants to the region.

^[1] Michelle M. Martinez. “Down History’s Trail; Round Rock Chamber Shapes Park into a Piece of the Past.” Austin American Statesman May 18, 2000.

Pamela LebLanc. “The Hoofbeats of Herds Echo at Brushy Creek.” Austin American Statesman November 21, 2002.

Cara Tanamachi. “Tourist Roundup for Round Rock?; Officials Hope Planned Chisholm Trail Statue Will Bring in Visitors.” Austin American Statesman May 7, 1996.

Pamela Ward. “Plan for Cattle Statues Now a Bronzed Bonanza of Steer.” Austin American Statesman September 12, 1996.

Pamela Ward. “Sculpting a Piece of History.” Austin American Statesman January 1, 1997.