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Eugene businessman and former senator Robert Asbury [R.A.]&nbsp;Booth commissioned this heroic-sized statue to commemorate the mid-19th-century Christian missionaries who served multiple congregations in rural communities spread over significant distances on the Oregon frontier. Many rode a "circuit" on horseback, visiting a different congregation each Sunday.&nbsp; This monument depicts the donor's father, Robert Booth. Robert Booth had been a Methodist circuit rider. The Booth family migrated west on the Oregon Trail in 1852.&nbsp; Robert and one of his sons became gravely ill while on the trail. His wife made him promise that if God delivered him from death, Robert would become a Christian preacher once they settled in Oregon. Robert served as a circuit rider in the Willamette Valley, eventually covering seven counties.&nbsp; The statue was sculpted by prominent western sculptor&nbsp;A.&nbsp;Phimister Proctor. It portrays an aging minister who studies his Bible while riding atop a plodding horse. Proctor also sculpted the&nbsp;Pioneer and&nbsp;Pioneer Mother on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene and the equestrian&nbsp;Pioneer Mother&nbsp;in Kansas City, Missouri. An estimated 5,000 people attended the statue's 1924 dedication in front of the state capitol. It was moved a short distance to the east side to&nbsp;accommodate the construction of a new capitol the following decade. It was then reoriented in January 1953 so that the circuit rider would be facing westward. A falling tree knocked over by the Columbus Day storm on October 12, 1962, severely damaged the statue. Artist James Lee Hanson restored the statue, sculpting a new head for the rider.

Proceedings at the Unveiling and Dedication of the Circuit Rider. 1924. 

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Monument honoring mid-19th-century Christian ministers who served multiple congregations in  communities spread over significant distances on the Oregon frontier. Sculpted by A. Phimister Proctor, it depicts itinerant minister Robert Booth.

Circuit Rider statue

Visit pioneer-themed monuments located throughout Oregon's Willamette Valley.

In 1928, Vancouver, Washington, declared its urban
sophistication by erecting renowned sculptor Avard Fairbanks’ bronze Pioneer Mother in historic Esther Short
Park. Dozens of western cities erected pioneer monuments around this time. For the
former fur trading fort, installing a major bronze statue was a way to shore up
its cultural significance in the area relative to rapidly-growing Portland,
Oregon, just across the Columbia River.

Monuments to white pioneer mothers appeared
throughout the American West in the late 1920s. Among the most famous are the Pioneer Woman in Ponca City, Oklahoma,
and the 12 Madonna of the Trail statues
erected across the nation by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Both
those designs depicted strong young women striding confidently westward. In
contrast, the Pioneer Mother that
Fairbanks sculpted for Vancouver, Washington, rests demurely against a
shoulder-high concrete backdrop. Instead of a sturdy sunbonnet, she wears a
shawl across her shoulders that gently echoes the Madonna-like headscarves
typical of western art produced in the 1840s. She stands with a flintlock rifle
in her right hand but appears unprepared to use it. Her left rests tenderly on
the head of her eldest child. That daughter echoes her maternal touch,
reassuring the youngest child. A son grasps their mother’s skirts timidly. The
sculpture’s gentle domesticity was further reinforced by the waterfall and
flowering shrubs surrounding it in its original location.

Fairbanks adapted his earlier Old Oregon Trail medallion for the reverse of the monument. Those
bas reliefs depict a hardy pioneer guiding his covered wagon and ox team over
rough western terrain, while his bare-headed wife holds their baby in a
Madonna-like pose. For Vancouver, Fairbanks reproduced this image but renamed
it The Pioneer Mothers.

At least one daughter of Oregon settlers disagreed
with the balance Fairbanks struck between celebrating early settlers and
depicting the hardships they faced. Izella Surfus Osterud viewed the Fairbanks
monument in the late 1960s with her granddaughter, telling her:<blockquote>“‘T’wasn’t like that at all. Not at all. First thing is, the baby would be
dead...The danger wasn’t wildcats or Indians, but cholera...Guns weren’t any use
for that. And a mother couldn’t protect
her children, either...Should have waited a couple of years and taken the train.’”1</blockquote>Historical research confirms Osterud’s claim
that communicable diseases carried West by white settlers were more dangerous
to them than were the Native peoples they encountered along the way.&nbsp;But most white westerners
preferred myth to reality, and celebration to commiseration.

Established in 1853, Esther Short
Park had become a center of civic life by the early twentieth century, hosting
the county fair, big band concerts, and baseball games. But, like many American
cities, Vancouver’s downtown area was abandoned by the growing middle class
amid suburbanization after World War II. By the mid-1970s, Esther Short Park
was primarily frequented by vagrants and panhandlers.&nbsp; The park became so overgrown that visitors
would have to climb through the surrounding shrubs to see the Pioneer Mother statue.

Then in the late 1990s, Vancouver’s
massive downtown revitalization effort succeeded in transforming Esther Short
Park into a bustling town plaza. As part of those renovations, Fairbanks’ Pioneer Mother was relocated to a far
less tranquil site facing a busy downtown street that made the statue more
visible to passing motorists.&nbsp;Vancouver residents have reclaimed the renovated
park, but many reject Fairbanks’ shrine to white civilization.The historic
statue has become an obstacle to park visitors rather than a centerpiece of
modern urban planning. Visiting Seattle resident
Holly Burpo told The Columbian in
2012 that found the statue “creepy...Her, with the kids. I don’t know, the
meaning is unclear.”2&nbsp;The
city’s tribute to pioneer motherhood has become at best confusing, and at worst
an impediment to Vancouverites’ enthusiastic return to the once dangerous
downtown park.

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Monument to white pioneer mothers erected in Esther Short Park in 1928. After World War II, the park fell into disuse and the statue was largely forgotten. Urban renewal brought extensive renovations to the park, and this statue was moved to a more visible location.

Pioneer Mother statue

Coming of
the White Man was originally displayed as part of the Lewis and Clark
Exposition, a&nbsp;1905 fair marking the centennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition's journey from Missouri to the Pacific. Herman MacNeil’s statue features two native men facing
eastward toward wagon trains arriving along the Oregon Trail. Like other
leading artists of his generation, MacNeil thought of indigenous North
Americans as noble savages. But he was one of the first American sculptors to
reject depictions of Native Americans as childlike. MacNeil nonetheless viewed
indigenous peoples as innocents who would necessarily yield way to white
civilization.

In Coming
of the White Man, Multnomah, chief of the local Multnomah Indian tribe,
stands with his arms crossed, staring haughtily as the Lewis and Clark
expedition’s canoes approach down the Columbia River. Beside him, a young
Indian scout points excitedly toward those arriving from the East. 

At the Lewis and Clark exposition, Coming of the White Man had been
juxtaposed against Frederic Remington’s Hitting
the Trail, an ensemble of four exuberant cowboys on horseback, with pistols
raised.&nbsp; These spirited cowboys stood in
for the white-dominated American nation that had indeed come—and dispossessed—the
indigenous peoples of the American West, beginning with the explorations of the
Lewis and Clark expedition.

While some have interpreted Coming of the White Man as depicting
empathy toward native people over the loss of their land and way of life, it nonetheless
declared the inevitable destruction of indigenous populations.&nbsp; Indeed, Portland Mayor George H. Williams professed
both interpretations in the same breath at its 1904 presentation ceremony:

<blockquote>“The
historic significance of this group is the white man’s invasion of the
wilderness home of the Indians. This monument will probably stand here when the
race of people whom it represents has become extinct, and will then describe to
those who come to see it better than any book the form, features, and chief
characteristics of the original inhabitants of this country.”</blockquote>

Williams went on to explain that his late
predecessor, David P. Thompson, had “erected…a splendid representation of our
wild animals” in the form of a massive bronze elk in nearby downtown Portland, which
his family “supplemented…[with] a more splendid representation of the wild men
of this country.”1&nbsp;Portlanders
were confident that both wild Native men would eventually disappear due to the arrival
of white civilization—a process made possible by the Lewis and Clark expedition.After the fair, the statue was moved to Washington Park. It now stands near the&nbsp;Sacajawea&nbsp;statue (which was also displayed at the 1905 fair) and the 1908 Lewis and Clark Memorial Column.

Originally displayed at the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition. It depicts indigenous leader Multnomah and a young brave watching the arrival of white men up the Columbia River into the Willamette Valley.

Coming of the White Man statue

This 1905 statue by Alice Cooper depicts the famed indigenous woman who served as a translator and guide to the Lewis and Clark expedition. White female suffrage leaders considered the statue to be a fitting memorial to the thousands of white women who brought Anglo-American civilization to the Oregon frontier in the mid-19th century.Portland’s Sacajawea statue was in many ways a feminist project. While most western
public monuments commemorated prominent white men, progressive women actively
promoted pioneer mother monuments, beginning with this statue. The white
Pacific Northwest suffragists that sponsored the Sacajawea statue chose to erect the first bronze public statue of a
specific western woman. They sponsored a regional women-only sculpture competition
to select its design. Instead of an allegorical female figure like those used
in Confederate monuments in that era, the Portland suffragists presented a
heroic depiction of a specific female historic figure. And they scheduled its
dedication to align with a National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
national convention and the Lewis and Clark exposition in Portland. National
and regional suffrage proponents, including Susan B. Anthony and Abigail Scott
Duniway, attended the sculpture’s 1905 dedication.

The white feminist leaders who helped to
erect Cooper’s Sacajawea considered
it a fitting memorial to the thousands of white women who had migrated to Oregon
some half-century earlier. Fundraising materials produced by the Sacajawea
Statue Association declared that Sacajawea (more accurately spelled Sacagawea)
was “[t]he first pioneer mother to cross the Rocky mountains and carry her baby
into Oregon country.”<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Link: null">1</a>&nbsp;Local
writer and historian Eva Emery Dye and Portland suffragist Sarah Evans depicted
Sacagawea as both a nurturer to westering men and children and as a civilizer—roles
that whites typically associated with white women, whom they considered more “civilized.”
Local suffragist Anna Shaw went a step further, suggesting that it was white
men, rather than Indian women, who were uncivilized. 

Dozens more monuments to pioneer women would
be sponsored by local elite women in the following decades. However, later
commemorations would refuse to accept both Sacajawea's
feminist agenda and its use of a woman of color to symbolize frontier
motherhood. 

Sacajawea’s erectors apparently considered the statue to be a racially
progressive project.&nbsp; Cooper’s heroic statue
of Sacagawea celebrated her as a literal and figurative leader to white
men. Her mixed-race son represented
racial mixing. He served as an allegory of the diverse populations of the West
becoming one American people. Yet by choosing Lewis and Clark’s indigenous guide
to commemorate white settler women, the monument also contributed to a national
narrative about progress and the expansion of white civilization to the West.
After all, the statue was erected at the center of the Lewis and Clark Exposition,
which explicitly celebrated white westward expansion. Like The
Coming of the White Man, which also was displayed at the Lewis and Clark
Exposition, Sacagawea became a symbol of indigenous peoples welcoming white
settlers. Her son’s dual ethnic heritage pointed to indigenous peoples
embracing civilized society. In dominant white thinking of the time, no
indigenous woman could serve as an allegory of virtues like liberty. But as the
mother of a young mixed-racial child who paved the way to white settlement of
Indian lands, Sacagawea could—at
least in 1905 Portland—symbolically birth a more civilized nation.

After the fair closed, Sacajawea and The Coming of
the White Man were relocated to Washington Park. They now stand&nbsp;near the 1908 Lewis and Clark Memorial
Column in Washington Park. Sacajawea’s celebration of pioneer motherhood later
inspired the more conservative Daughters of the American Revolution to create
the twelve famous <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow"></a>Madonna of the Trail statues
installed across the United States in the late 1920s.

Feminist leaders gathered in Portland in 1905 to dedicate a statue of Sacajawea in honor of the Native American guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition and to commemorate “the pioneer mother of Old Oregon.” The white female suffrage leaders who helped to erect this statue of the famed indigenous woman considered Alice Cooper’s statue to be a fitting memorial to the thousands of white women who had brought Anglo-American civilization to the Oregon frontier.

Sacajawea statue

The United States National Bank building opened for business in 1917, and roughly doubled in size in 1925. The company eventually merged with U.S. Bancorp, but continues to operate as the bank's main Portland branch. United States National Bank was established in Portland in 1890. It soon acquired several other banks and outgrew its available space.&nbsp;The 1917 building and its 1925 expansion were&nbsp;designed by A. E. Doyle. Doyle apprenticed in the&nbsp;prominent Portland architecture&nbsp;firm Whidden &amp; Lewis and later studied&nbsp;at Columbia University. He also designed other prominent Portland buildings, including&nbsp;Reed College, three major department stores, the Benson Hotel, the Central Library, and the Pacific Building.&nbsp; The US Bank building combined classical architectural design with new construction materials: steel frame and reinforced concrete. Exterior decorative elements were made from glazed terra cotta. The lobby interior&nbsp;is decorated extensively with marble.&nbsp;A.E. Doyle&nbsp;designed the addition to blend seamlessly with the original building. The bank later expanded to other locations, most notably the 42-story U.S. Bancorp tower that opened in 1983, but maintained this 1917/25 building. A third-floor museum displays artifacts from the turn of the twentieth century. The bronze lobby doors were designed by Avard Fairbanks. Fairbanks taught art at the University of Oregon, before returning to his home state of Utah. Fairbanks' design for these doors&nbsp;was inspired by the famous Renaissance-era "Gates of Paradise" doors to the Baptistry of Florence. Doors facing Broadway emphasize 19th century transportation and technology. Scenes include the Lewis &amp; Clark Expedition, a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail, Captain Robert Gray exploring the Columbia River in his ship "Columbia," a steam ship, drawbridge, and automobile. Native Americans appear in several of these scenes as uncivilized observers of manifest destiny. The Sixth Avenue doors emphasize progress through science and enterprise. These scenes resonate with Fairbanks' monumental&nbsp;Pioneer Mother sculpture for neighboring Vancouver, Washington, and other pioneer monuments erected in Salem, Oregon, and throughout the American West. (Lobby doors are only visible when bank is closed for business.)

Grand bank designed by Albert E. Doyle and constructed in 1917 and expanded in 1925. Constructed of reinforced concrete and clad in terra cotta, it is the first edifice built in Portland with a steel frame. The bronze lobby doors were sculpted by Avard Fairbanks.

United States National Bank Building

The Oregon Trail Coordinating Council commissioned this statue to mark the 150th anniversary of the Overland Trail in 1992. Some Portlanders objected to the statue, arguing that it glorified white settlers’ seizure of Native lands. Meanwhile, many smaller Pacific Northwest towns declared their desire to prominently display the controversial piece within their communities.In 1992, the Oregon Trail Coordinating Council (OTCC) commissioned Oregon artist David Manuel to sculpt a $200,000 bronze “memorial to the spirit of the pioneers”1 to commemorate the trail’s sesquicentennial. Manuel’s design utilized imagery common to the dozens of pioneer monuments erected across the United States over the course of the twentieth century. It featured a strong male pioneer guiding his family westward, a nurturing Pioneer Mother, their sturdy young son, a wagon wheel, a rifle, and a Bible. In many ways, it resembled 15 other pioneer family monuments that had been welcomed in communities throughout the American West since World War II. But Manuel’s design quickly sparked controversy in its intended home of Portland, Oregon. Portlanders could not agree where to place the OTCC’s gift. In March 1993, the statue was placed in a temporary location in front of the Oregon History Center. The statue appeared right at home in front of Richard Haas’ much-respected 1989 mural celebrating the Lewis and Clark Expedition. That mural sought to be inclusive by featuring Lewis, Clark, their African-American slave York, indigenous translator and guide Sacagawea, and her infant son. However, owing to concerns of some residents and staff, the History Center was hesitant to install the piece permanently.A site committee including representatives of the OTCC, the Oregon History Center, Portland city agencies, and neighborhood association met biweekly for three months. They unanimously approved a proposal to install The Promised Land in one of the downtown Portland’s North Park blocks. Around the statue they planned to display quotes from Oregon Trail diaries and interpretive signs explaining the significance of the Trail to modern visitors.But strong opposition to siting the statue in the North Park blocks quickly arose. The Public Art Advisory Committee (PAAC) of Portland's Metropolitan Arts Commission (MAC) voted unanimously to reject the site proposal because <blockquote>“the depiction of subject matter was found to be [an] inappropriate and inaccurate portrayal of the settlers of Oregon, excluding the many other races and religions of those who have come to call Oregon home. It is also insensitive to the history of the indigenous peoples of the area.”2</blockquote>Artists and art historians also challenged the statue’s artistic merit. But most of the controversy focused on the perceived culturally insensitivity of the monument during an era that favored racial diversity. Both scholars and the general public began to question the appropriateness of a statue celebrating white westward expansion.News of the controversy quickly spread nationwide, with pundits and politicians eagerly weighing in while others hoped to avoid the issue. For example, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh displayed a scale model of The Promised Land on his television show. An Oregonian poll found that Portlanders supported placing the statue in a prominent downtown location by a two to one ratio. Nonetheless, the controversy raged on.Reflecting the ways that opinions about the monument reflected a partisan divide, residents and city officials from smaller communities in the Pacific Northwest did not share Portlanders’ angst about Manuel’s design. Other Oregon towns that were heavily invested in heritage tourism lauding Oregon's frontier past expressed a desire to display the statue, including Baker City, Medford, and The Dalles. But even in these smaller towns, not all Oregonians embraced Manuel’s statue.While many Portlanders appeared willing to accept the statue, the controversy about where to place it raged on. A second site committee, which included local community stakeholders as well as historians and members of the PAAC and MAC, ultimately rejected the OTCC’s preferred location in the North Park Blocks as being too prominent and beautiful. They settled instead on Chapman Square as the statue’s final destination. During construction on that downtown business district site, The Promised Land moved to a second temporary location across the Willamette River in the Lloyd District, where it stood overlooking a light rail stop. The statue’s opponents hoped that, after languishing in the Lloyd District several years, the piece would be forgotten and remain in that less noticeable location. But it was not to be. Ironically, over the next fifteen years both the North Park Blocks and Lloyd District would decline in importance, while the newly renovated Chapman Square flourished along with Portland’s financial district.Chapman Square has a long history of struggles over inclusivity and popular memory. It was home to anti-Chinese riots in the 1880s. By the 1920s, it was designated for women’s use after working women complained of repeated sexual harassment in Portland’s downtown parks. More recently, the homeless have built protest camps in the square. The statue was installed near a monument to the imperialist Spanish-American War and a massive bronze elk celebrating the conquest of western lands.Site Committee II sought to make the monument more inclusive by installing bronze footprints and wagon-wheel tracks crossing Chapman Square. They also replaced the OTCC’s planned Oregon Trail diary excerpts with a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson. But those lines were supposedly spoken to Osage leaders on the eastern Great Plains to justify white expansion into native lands. The committee thus sacrificed historical accuracy in favor of an appearance of mutuality. And they used a text that was in fact dedicated to white conquest to do so. In the early 21st century, most Portlanders seemed content to simply ignore the once-controversial statue as they go about their own business in Portland’s business district. But in summer 2020, Chapman Square was once more at the center of public protests. Daily protests associated with the Black Lives Matter movement centered on the Justice Center and neighboring federal buildings across the street from Chapman Square. Amid a showdown with federal troops, protesters placed tape over the mouths of the three people depicted in the Promised Land statue, and set off firecrackers at its base. The City of Portland removed the statue to protect it from further damage.

Donated to the city of Portland to mark the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail, this pioneer statue has engendered spirited debate in recent years as residents question whether its title implies that the acquisition of Native land was sanctioned by divine providence. Similar statues that laud the pioneering spirit of people who moved into and acquired land once controlled by Native tribes have led to similar controversy and debate in recent years, with opponents pointing to the way that the monuments celebrated white settlers who took land that had once been occupied by Native peoples. While many might believe that this interpretation of Western history is recent, the 1992 dedication of this monument was opposed. With some residents questioning the aesthetic value of the monument and others protesting against its uncontextualized depiction of a complicated and often violent and tragic history, civic leaders decided against placing the monument in the North Park blocks. The statue was placed in temporary locations for about two years before finally being installed in Chapman Square. In summer 2020 it was targeted by Black Lives Matter protesters, and was removed by the City of Portland.

Portland's "Promised Land" Statue

Also known as "Joy" or "Pioneer Woman," this statue and drinking fountain was sculpted by Portland State College art professor Frederic Littman in 1956. The artist depicted a mother playing with her child in the park to symbolize&nbsp;joy. According to a plaque placed near the fountain, the mother and child depicted in the sculpture are the sister and nephew of George B. Staehli, who grew up near the park. The artist intended to&nbsp;depict timeless joy in the mother-child relationship, rather than a&nbsp;particular era. Most artists&nbsp;shied away from sculpting traditional pioneer women in sunbonnets from the mid-1950s through the late 1960s, Fine art of that period was avant-garde and non-representational. But Western films and television shows were popular at that time. Older monuments depicting pioneer mothers stood throughout Portland and the Willamette Valley. And a number of other public fountains erected in the first half of the 20th century in the Midwest and West did feature pioneer women. It is therefore not surprising that Portlanders read the woman on the fountain as a pioneer woman. The plaque beneath the fountain identifies its title as "Joy (Pioneer Woman)." The bronze mother and child stand above two drinking fountains. This fountain's design was a modern spin on public fountains donated by philanthropists to growing cities like Portland in the early 20th century. Elsewhere in the United States, Progressive Era&nbsp;fountains were typically carved from granite, and included a large round trough for work horses. Statues depicting pioneers were sometimes placed at the center of such fountains.&nbsp; Portland has a unique history of public water fountains, though. By the 1920s, it&nbsp;featured dozens of iconic "Benson Bubblers," which were named for&nbsp;businessman and philanthropist Simon Benson. Benson donated $10,000 in 1912 to fund the installation of 20 bronze drinking fountains. Some say that Benson sought to reduce workers' consumption of alcoholic beverages during their lunch breaks. Others claim that he was inspired by the sight of a girl crying from thirst at an Independence Day parade. In the 1970s, the Benson family requested that traditional four-bowl bubblers only be installed within downtown Portland to maintain their uniqueness. This fountain&nbsp;was donated by Florence and George P. Laberee. It stands on&nbsp;Council Crest, which is thought to be the highest point in Portland at 1,073 feet above sea level.&nbsp;The statue was stolen in the 1980s by vandals who sawed through the mother's ankles. The sculpture was recovered a decade later in Northeast Portland and reinstalled near the center of the park.

Also known as "Joy" or "Pioneer Woman," this statue and drinking fountain was sculpted by Frederic Littman in 1956. It is an adaptation of early-20th-century public fountains and Portland's iconic "Benson Bubblers."

Laberee Memorial Fountain

At the turn of the 20th century,&nbsp;New York artist Allen G. Newman sculpted an Oregon pioneer based on historic objects provided by the Breyman family of Salem, Oregon. The original zinc casting was erected near the Oregon state capitol in Salem in 1904. J. L. Mott Iron Works in New York cast numerous copies of "The Pioneer." One in Ashland, Oregon, was known locally as "Pioneer Mike."&nbsp;Other castings were erected on the University of Colorado campus and in Storm Lake, Iowa. None of the original statues are known to have survived. In recent years, Pioneer statues were recast for Ashland and Storm Lake. The original Salem statue was toppled by a windstorm in 1917 and never replaced.

Sculpted from zinc by Allen G. Newman. It was modeled after an early white settler's hat, rifle and pouch provided by the Breyman family of Salem, Oregon. Statue was toppled by a windstorm in 1917 and never replaced. Later castings of the statue were erected in locations across the United States.

Pioneer statue (1903-1917)

In the mid-19th century, several cities—most notably
Oregon City, Corvallis, and Salem—competed to become Oregon’s territorial and
state capital. Oregon’s capitol building was constructed of wood in the Greek
Revival style in Salem in 1854. It soon burned to the ground under suspicious
circumstances. Some suspected arson inspired by the fight between Corvallis and
Salem to serve as the state capital. 

Construction of the second Oregon capitol building began in
1873. It was designed by J. Krumbein and W. G. Gilbert. Like many United States
statehouses of the era, it was shaped like a cross and topped with a towering copper-gilded
dome that was added in 1893. It combined elements of classical and Italian
Renaissance architecture. Fire destroyed this second capitol on April 25, 1935.
The fire was believed to be accidental.

For the third capitol building, a jury selected from among
123 design submissions ranging from classical domed structures to simple modern
designs. The jury selected a compromise design submitted by Francis Keally and
the architectural firm of Trowbridge &amp; Livingston. The architects described
their design as a&nbsp;<blockquote>“forceful and vital modern structure with broad and masculine
feeling.”<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Link: null">1</a></blockquote> It
is in the PWA Moderne (also known as Federal Moderne or stripped classical)
style typical of buildings constructed using Public Works Administration funds
during the Great Depression. PWA Moderne style combined classical symmetrical
form with Art Deco decorations. A flat-topped cylinder stands in for a
classical dome on top. The main structure is made from concrete, but the
exterior is sheathed in white marble.

In place of the elaborate exterior decorations typical of US
statehouses, the designers offered strong, simple lines sparsely decorated with
architectural sculpture. Two large marble reliefs sculpted by Leo Friedlander
decorate the front of the building. One depicts the Lewis and Clark expedition;
the other features a family of white settlers migrating to Oregon in their covered
wagon. A 23-foot-tall gold-plated statue of a pioneer sculpted by Ulric
Ellerhusen stands atop the flat-topped “dome.” Both artists’ work were typical
of pioneer monuments erected in the 1920s and 1930s. Nonetheless, Oregon
residents penned numerous complaints about the artists’ work during the 1930s. They
questioned the works’ historical accuracy and complained of their perceived
modernism.&nbsp; One complained that an “eastern
sculptor [Ellerhusen] has pictured our Oregon pioneer as a smooth shaved gent,
probably wearing rayon underwear.”<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Link: null">2</a>&nbsp;Over
time, Oregonians warmed to “Gold Man.” Today, it is one of the best-known
symbols of the state.

The interior was decorated with marble. Murals by Frank H.
Schwarz and Barry Faulkner depicting Oregon history line the central rotunda
and legislative chambers.

The new capitol building was dedicated on October 11, 1938. In
addition to building the new statehouse, the Capitol Reconstruction Project
added a four-block mall stretching north from the capitol to meet the needs of expanding
state government, including a state library. Stylistically matched legislative
wings were added to the capitol building in 1977.

Oregon's 1876 state capitol building burned down in 1935 and was replaced with a new building in 1938 in the PWA Moderne style.

Oregon State Capitol

Upon his death in 1940,
former janitor and elevator operator Caroll Moores bequeathed $25,000 from his
modest estate to fund a pioneer memorial in his hometown of Salem, Oregon. Such
pioneer monuments had been extremely popular in the 1920s and 1930s. But as
World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, Americans lost interest in
erecting bronze and marble monuments to Pioneer Mothers. 

&nbsp;After
a decade of inactivity, individuals began to suggest uses for those funds. Most
suggestions seemed to promote proposers’ pet projects: children’s playground,
an ambulance, a community building, a wading pool, or a municipal golf course.&nbsp; A special commission named by the city
favored “statuary of a highly artistic character.”<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Link: null">1</a>&nbsp;But popular opinion
appeared to strongly favor erecting a small memorial in the Odd Fellows
cemetery and using the income from the remainder of the fund to maintain that
cemetery because a number of prominent pioneers were buried there.

The people
of Salem were understandably shocked when a plan was announced to purchase a nude
1914 Venus Victorious&nbsp;statue sculpted
by prominent French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir with Moores’ bequest.&nbsp;That statue represented a dramatic departure from
traditional depictions of pioneer women in sunbonnets. The opinion page of the
Salem Capital Journal filled with
outraged letters from church boards, garden clubs, and individuals who believed
that the impressionist nude sculpture of the Roman goddess of love did not
represent Oregon pioneers, and was not appropriate to erect in front of the new
county courthouse. The national media soon picked up the story.

<blockquote>“‘What
we want,’ said one member of the Lions, is a statue of a pioneer woman in a
gingham dress and a sunbonnet … not this trash.’”<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Link: null">2</a></blockquote>

When the public was invited
to comment on alternate proposals, significant public support developed for a local
artist’s modernist allegory including a male nude figure representing the Spirit of the Oregon Trail. Instead, the local park commission
settled on a much safer choice: a pioneer family group by longtime pioneer
monument sculptor Avard T. Fairbanks, which they would erect in a local park. The
Oregon Statesman columnist described Fairbanks’
design as “’safe’” and “indulg[ing] in no abstraction.”<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Link: null">3</a>&nbsp;Fairbanks was overjoyed that his traditional pioneer
imagery prevailed:

<blockquote>"This is a very great
triumph in America because at one time there were art interests and those
directing the new movements and isms who made recommendations for the erection
of a nude 'Venus' by the French modernist, Renoir. Had it been completed Oregon
would have had a French female nude to represent the pioneer mothers of the
great Oregon Trail. What a travesty... Fortunately, we have real Westerners
and true Americans who still believe that our cultural heritage is well worth
memorializing with true and sincere presentations rather than by sophisticated
misrepresentations."<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="Link: null">4</a></blockquote>

Tellingly,
Fairbanks declared the iconic white pioneer woman to represent not only “real
Westerners” whose ancestors had carried white civilization westward, but also
all “true Americans,” whose identity had become inextricably linked to western
mythology by the 1950s.

Earlier
works by Fairbanks and his contemporaries tended to focus on self-sacrificing
pioneer mothers. In contrast, Guidance of
Youth placed a young man at the center of the 1950s Salem monument. In the
midst of Cold War uncertainty, mainstream America’s energetic youth, rather
than its mothers’ civilizing influence, represented the nation’s greatest hope
for the future. But the 19th-century frontier myth still underpinned American
national identity.

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Janitor Carroll Moore left most of his life savings to pay for a pioneer monument for the city of Salem. Plans to purchase a nude "Venus Victorious" statue by famous French sculptor Pierre-Auguste Renoir sparked controversy. The committee instead selected Avard Fairbanks' depiction of a pioneer family. The strapping young son leads the way into the future.

Guidance of Youth statue

In the early 20th century, communities across the United States put up public statues honoring western pioneers. Oregon rancher, attorney, and civic leader Joseph N. Teal sought to celebrate early Oregon settlers by erecting a bronze monument. Teal viewed Oregon settlers as western counterparts to the earliest English settlers in North America. He therefore asked prominent sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor to create a sculpture modeled on Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ famous 1899 bronze tribute to The Puritans. But the Paris-trained artist instead turned to imagery drawn from his own western youth.Phimister Proctor, as he was known, was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1860. His family gradually migrated south and west via covered wagon until arriving in Denver, Colorado, in 1871. As a young man growing up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, Proctor prized hunting and fishing ahead of his art. Even as an older man, he routinely abandoned his eastern studio to embark on large game hunts in the West. He studied living wild animals and dissected dead ones—many of which he shot himself—to reproduce their musculature accurately. For the Oregon pioneer monument, Proctor hired an old trapper named Jess Cravens from near Burns, Oregon, to serve as his model.Proctor’s resulting 1918 statue for the University of Oregon campus features a heroic-sized rugged buckskin-clad frontiersman carrying a rifle and whip, striding purposely into the West and the future. Viewers appreciated that Proctor’s Pioneer appeared ready to conquer nature, American Indians, or anything else that might stand in his way. The Oregon Daily Journal praised Proctor’s “faithful visualizing and reproduction of the frontier type.”1At the statue’s 1919 dedication, Oregon Historical Society president Frederick V. Holman gave a speech praising Proctor’s statue and celebrating what he considered white Oregon settlers’ racial superiority. He declared that<blockquote>“There were great numbers of savage Indians to be encountered and forced to respect the rights and property of these immigrants.”2</blockquote>Such justifications for white settlement on Native lands were typical of that era, but would become controversial a century later.A decade after sculpting The Pioneer, Proctor created a seated Pioneer Mother as a companion to the swashbuckling Pioneer. Pioneer Mother was placed in the center of what was then known as the Women’s Quad, facing toward The Pioneer. Today, The Pioneer is an important campus landmark, but few students know that the Pioneer Mother exists.In recent years, some have begun to challenge the long beloved Pioneer statue. In 2011, students adorned the statue with a rainbow-colored balloon arch to mark National Coming Out Day, which encourages students and others to identify publicly as homosexual, bisexual or transgender. The juxtaposition of virile masculinity and homosexual pride was striking but short-lived. The balloons were removed from the statue within forty-five minutes.Even more recently, as the nation debated removing Confederate monuments due to their racist origins, students and faculty have drawn attention to the racial underpinnings of the Pioneer’s origins. In April 2018, University of Oregon students installed temporary exhibits that responded to the Pioneer and Pioneer Mother. The Pioneer installation was called Destiny Manifested. Students layered objects inside a plexiglass pedestal at the base of The Pioneer to represent the unforeseen consequences of white settlement. The following year, protestors sprayed the statue in red paint, and dozens of students and faculty called for its removal. Meanwhile, the university formed a “presidential working group to review campus monuments, plaques and public art installations and recommend whether any changes need to be made to those features to recognize the diverse histories of our community.”3 Then, in June 2020, as people throughout the United States and beyond debated the fate of monuments to Confederate generals and leaders of white expansion, protesters tore down the "Pioneer Father" and Pioneer Mother statues. The University moved them into storage as discussions of how to move forward continued.

One of the few monuments erected to a generic pioneer man in the early 20th century, this statue of a white frontiersman dressed in buckskin was dedicated on the University of Oregon campus in 1919. A companion pioneer woman was erected a decade later in the women's quad. A century later, the statue would become broiled in debate for its glorification of white settlement. Protestors removed both statues in June 2020; the statues were placed in storage.

Pioneer statue (Eugene, Oregon)

Dozens of public monuments celebrating frontier women in sunbonnets were erected between World War I and World War II. Most pioneer mothers sculpted in the late 1920s are depicted actively guiding their children westward. In this statue, donor Burt Brown Baker instead asked sculptor Alexander Phimister Proctor to depict an elderly woman resting from her labors, gazing contemplatively at the partially-open book in her lap. But like other pioneer monuments erected in this period, the Pioneer Mother celebrated white women bringing Euro-American “civilization” to the western United States. In recent years, students and faculty at the University of Oregon have begun to challenge its glorification of manifest destiny.In the late 1920s, cities throughout the western United States put up statues honoring white “pioneer mothers.” Two of the best known were the widely publicized “Pioneer Woman” competition for Ponca City, Oklahoma, and the Pioneer Mother equestrian grouping in Kansas City, Missouri. New York City attorney Burt Brown Barker admired both those project. He decided to donate a pioneer mother statue to his home state of Oregon. In contrast to the Ponca City and Kansas City monuments, though, Barker did not the Oregon statue to emphasize the hardships of frontier life. Rather than memorializing the “battles and sorrows of pioneering” portrayed in other pioneer memorials, the donor explained to the sculptor that he wanted this statue to remember pioneer women as “they sat in the evening glow resting from their labors.” For<blockquote>“Others have perpetuated her struggles; I want to perpetuate the peace which followed her struggles. Others have perpetuated her adventure; I want to perpetuate the spirit which made the adventure possible, and the joy which crowned her declining years as she looked upon the fruits of her labor and caught but a faint glimpse of what it will mean for posterity.”1</blockquote> The completed statue depicts an elderly woman seated in a chair. She contemplates a partially-open book resting in her lap. By depicting the pioneer woman seated in an ornate chair resting from her labors, the A. Phimister Proctor emphasized frontier women’s domesticity. That image was in marked contrast to the active male Pioneer carrying a rifle and whip that Proctor had previously sculpted for the University of Oregon campus. That Pioneer Father—as he became known—stood posed to conquer the frontier.The male Pioneer was installed in the heart of campus near Johnson Hall in 1919. The Pioneer Mother was installed in the Women’s Quadrangle near Gerlinger Hall and Hendricks and Susan Campbell dorms. It was dedicated on Mother’s Day in 1932. The bronze Pioneer Mother was installed directly south of the Pioneer Father, and sat facing north toward him. But Johnson Hall stood between them, maintaining visual separation between the male and female settlers.Soon after commissioning the Pioneer Mother, donor Burt Brown Barker moved back to Oregon. He was appointed vice president of the University of Oregon with the understanding that he would not have to live in Eugene, and that he would not be paid. Instead, he and university president Bennett Hall agreed that his salary would help cover the costs of the pioneer mother statue.The statue depicts Oregon’s pioneer mothers as the donor recalled his mother and grandmothers “drinking in the beauty and peace of the afterglow of [their] twilight days.”2 But the sculptor did not completely abandon his own interest—shared with many Americans at the time—in the hardships that women faced on the overland trail. On the left and right sides of the statue’s base Proctor installed bronze bas-reliefs depicting hardship and sorrow. In one, pioneers bury a dead family member beside their covered wagons. In the other a male pioneer cracks his whip over a team of oxen straining to pull a covered wagon up a steep slope. His wife is seated inside the wagon, clad in the sunbonnet typically associated with pioneer women.On the front of the pedestal appear the words “The Pioneer Mother” and “PAX,” the Latin word for “peace.” On the back of the base is an excerpt from a letter written by donor Burt Brown Baker to sculptor A. Phimister Proctor soliciting what became the Pioneer Mother statue. In it, Baker dedicates the statue to the memory of “my mother, Elvira Brown Baker, a pioneer of 1847, in the sunsets of her life.” “But,” the plaque concludes, “to us there lives that spirit of conquering peace which I wish posterity to remember.”What did Baker mean by a “conquering peace”? Elsewhere in the letter from which this epitaph was drawn, Baker described the ideal pioneer mother as a “helpmeet in blazing the westward trail that the course of empire might take its way, as the God of civilization has ordained.”3 In other words, pioneer mothers assisted pioneer men in the project of Manifest Destiny. Like many white Americans of that era, Baker believed that white settlers were responsible for spreading Christian “civilization” to a supposedly “savage” frontier. Thus female settlers like Baker’s mother were agents of the conquest of indigenous peoples.One hundred years after their erection, the Pioneer statue stood in a highly visible location. The Pioneer Father is considered an important campus landmark and is included in campus tours for prospective students. The Pioneer Mother, though located only about 100 yards away, was in a less heavily traveled part of campus and few students know she exists.In recent years, students and faculty began to question the legacy of white racial dominance at the University of Oregon. In April 2018 students created a temporary art installation called Peace (PAX) for Who? They surrounded the statue with white signposts documenting acts of racial injustice that occurred in the region. The art installation drew public attention to an often ignored statue. It also encouraged viewers to consider the racial implications of Burt Brown Baker’s tribute to early Oregon settlers.In June 2020, protesters tore down the Pioneer Mother and "Pioneer Father" statues. The University of Oregon moved the statues to storage as it considered alternate ways to display the statues.

This little-known companion to the 1919 Pioneer statue honored Oregon’s female settlers. In the 1920s and 1930s, cities throughout the western United States put up statues honoring white “pioneer mothers.” Most depicted young women striding purposely westward. In contrast, this statue depicts an elderly female settler resting from her efforts to bring Euro-American culture to the frontier. In recent years, the University of Oregon community has debated the meaning and future of both its pioneer statues. In June 2020, protesters tore down both pioneer monuments on the University of Oregon campus.

Willamette Valley Pioneer Monuments

Circuit Rider statue

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information