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Public sculptures that celebrate Independence's early white settlers and the town's role as a jumping-off point for the Oregon Trail.

These two statues make up a bronze scene depicting a spring near a Native American trail used by both Native people and white settlers. "Stella at the Spring" depicts a young pioneer woman carrying a bucket. She looks toward "A Young Native American." He crouches on a rock overlooking the spring, extending his left hand. Both pieces sculpted by Mischell Riley. "A Young Native American" was dedicated in 2000. "Stella at the Spring" was dedicated in 2001. The scene was commissioned by the Advisory Committee of the Roger T. Sermon Fund for the Roger T. Sermon Community Center grounds. Near this installation stand a pioneer cabin and a "Trail of Death" memorial marking the Potawatomi (Neshnabe) people from their homelands in northern Indiana to this area in 1838.

Two sculptures by Mischell Riley -- one depicting a young Native American man, and the other a young pioneer woman -- stand in front of the Roger T. Sermon Community Center. Nearby, a pioneer cabin and historical marker mark the location of an old spring used by both indigenous peoples and settlers. A Trail of Death memorial commemorates the forced removal of the Potawatomi (Neshnabe) people to this area in 1838.

Stella at the Spring and Native American Boy

Stella at the Spring and A Young Native American

Avard Tennyson Fairbanks sculpted the Old Oregon Trail medallion in 1924 while teaching art at the University of Oregon. It depicts the hardships that the artist's ancestors and nearly 500,000 others experienced while traveling westward on the overland trail by covered wagon in the mid-19th century.One 1852 migrant, Ezra Meeker, traveled back eastward along the trail in 1906 to seek the preservation of the Oregon Trail route. His efforts inspired Avard Fairbanks to sculpt a covered wagon drawn by oxen on the trail. In 1923 the Old Oregon Trail Association (OOTA) commissioned Fairbanks to design the organization's logo. That design was then cast as this 36-inch bronze medallion.The medallion depicts a man driving the team of oxen that pull the covered wagon over rocky terrain. His wife rides inside the wagon, holding their infant child. Fairbanks placed a pioneer mother and baby inside the wagon at the top and center of the design to commemorate his grandmother. But Fairbanks' depiction of the trail experience was shaped as much by popular culture at the time of its sculpting as by historical reality. In fact, women and children typically walked along beside the wagons to spare their teams, particularly on rough terrain.Fairbanks' depiction of trail life appears to have been influenced by W.H.D. Koerner's famous 1921 illustration Madonna of the Prairie. Koerner’s illustration was used as the cover image for Emerson Hough’s popular novel The Covered Wagon. Koerner’s instantly popular illustration portrayed the beautiful young heroine seated on a wagon box with the opening of the wagon cover forming a halo around her face. Koerner’s illustrations inspired the costuming for a silent film adaptation of Hough’s novel, which became the first western “epic” film. In the year before The Covered Wagon movie was released, only fifty identifiable western films had been made; in the year following its release, 150 westerns were made – and the industry maintained that level of production until it was eclipsed by television in the 1950s. Adaptations of Koerner’s covered wagon imagery pervaded the massive advertising for the movie. This gave Madonna of the Prairie a significant role in shaping public perceptions of settler women. It also appears to have shaped Avard Fairbanks’ conception of pioneer women in this medallion and in other pioneer monuments that he sculpted over the next 50 years.The OOTA originally planned to use Fairbanks' Fairbanks’ design to mark the Oregon Trail route from Independence, Missouri, to Seaside, Oregon. An Old Oregon Trail medallion was soon cast in bronze and installed in historic Broadway Bridge in Seaside, near a Fairbanks medallion depicting the Lewis and Clark Salt Works. A copy of that medallion was placed in this Oregon Trail monument in Baker City, Oregon, the hometown of OOTA founder Walter Meacham. Fairbanks also reproduced the scene, renamed The Pioneer Mothers, for installation on the reverse of his 1928 Pioneer Mother statue for Vancouver, Washington.Fairbanks' covered wagon design also was selected to print on a series of metal signs marking the Oregon Trail route. The states of Oregon and Idaho both ordered copies of the markers. But these smaller highway signs were not durable enough for highway use, and apparently were never installed.In more recent years, Fairbanks' descendants have recast Old Oregon Trail for various sites along the Oregon Trail. The artist’s son, David Fairbanks, donated this casting of the medallion to the Independence-based Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA). Two decades later, the OCTA and Jackson County, Missouri, installed the medallion on the lawn of the Historic Truman Courthouse on June 7, 2016. It was placed on the reverse of a stone marker first installed in 1948 marking the starting point of the Oregon Trail. The medallion's dedication ceremony also honored the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service.

Avard Fairbanks sculpted this covered wagon scene in 1924. Plans to use Fairbanks' image to mark the route of the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Seaside, Oregon, floundered in the 1920s, resulting in only two markers in Oregon. But in the 21st century, Fairbanks' descendants have worked to erect additional castings of the bronze medallion, including this one in the jumping-off point of Independence. The medallion was installed on a stone marker first installed in 1948.

Old Oregon Trail medallion (Independence, Missouri)

A
Pioneer Woman statue by Mexican
sculptor Juan Lombardo-Rivera was placed in the courtyard of the National
Frontier Trails Museum when it opened in 1990. In 2013 that sculpture was
stolen from the museum. The thieves took apart the statue and tried to sell it
for scrap. It was replaced by this statue by local artist Charles Goslin in
2016. The new sculpture closely resembles the original statue, but with some
important differences.

A
Pioneer Woman statue by Mexican
sculptor Juan Lombardo-Rivera was placed in the courtyard of the National
Frontier Trails Museum when it opened in 1990. It symbolized the hope and grit
of women who migrated west along the overland trails in the mid-19th
century. It also honored women who pioneered in other ways, breaking gender
barriers in recent decades. 

Lombardo-Rivera’s
statue was modeled after a local teenager, Theresa Brown. The life-sized bronze
statue depicted a woman wearing a blue dress and sunbonnet. She carried a baby
in one arm and a bucket in the other.

At
the time, some on the statue fundraising committee feared that the blue patina
that the Mexican artist applied to the statue was too vivid. But once it was
installed in the courtyard, Independence residents soon warmed to the work. 

In
2013 vandals stole the $35,000 Pioneer
Woman statue, broke it to pieces and tried to sell it for scrap metal worth
about $600. The Kansas City recycler recognized the bronze pieces as artwork and
refused to accept them for recycling. The three vandals were caught and
convicted. Two were sent to prison, and one was given probation. The remains of
the Lombardo-Rivera statue were not recovered. But a smaller model of the
original statue remains inside the museum.

The
city of Independence raised nearly $40,000 in private donations to replace the
statue. The selection committee chose a new Pioneer
Woman sculpture by local artist Charles Goslin that closely resembles the
stolen statue. Both sculptors depicted determined young women gazing into the
distance, with the wind blowing their long prairie-style dresses. The new statue was installed in January 2017.

Nonetheless,
minor differences between the two sculptures reveal changing gender ideals. The
new statue emphasizes the frontier mother’s nurturing role over her labor. Instead
of carrying an empty bucket, the new Pioneer
Woman cradles her baby with both arms. Whereas Lombardo-Rivera’s tiny
infant faced out toward the viewer, Goslin depicted a somewhat older child
gazing up at its mother’s face.&nbsp; The
Mexican artist celebrated women’s hard work, wearing rolled-up sleeves and
carrying a bucket. In contrast, the local artist’s new version keeps her arms covered
in long sleeves. She does not hold any tools or do any productive work. 

Charles
Goslin’s design for the 2016&nbsp;Pioneer Woman
closely resembles another bronze pioneer mother and child that Goslin
sculpted a decade earlier for a life-sized sculpture to accompany a stone wagon train relief in Pioneer Crossing Park in nearby Shawnee, Kansas. (Today, both Independence, Missouri, and Shawnee,
Kansas, are suburbs of Kansas City.) Both Goslin pioneer mothers wear long dresses
and carry young children as they walk westward. But the Shawnee pioneer woman
also wears a child gazes forward, echoing its mother’s westward focus, rather
than gazing up at her face. Goslin added blue patina to the Shawnee woman and child,
as Juan Lombardo-Rivera did with the first Independence monument. That Goslin
chose not to apply any color to the new bronze pioneer mother for Independence suggests
that the local artist sought to avoid a controversy like that surrounding the
earlier version. Or perhaps Goslin felt a patina was not necessary to make the
statue stand out in its new, more secure location near the entrance to the
National Frontier Trails Museum.

A "Pioneer Woman" statue by Mexican sculptor Juan Lombardo-Rivera was placed in the courtyard of the National Frontier Trails Museum when it opened in 1990. In 2013 that sculpture was stolen from the museum. The thieves took apart the statue and tried to sell it for scrap. It was replaced by this statue by local artist Charles Goslin in 2016.

Juan Lombardo-Rivera, Pioneer Woman, 1990. Photo by Cynthia Prescott.

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Independence, Missouri, Pioneer Monuments

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