so you are now currently the property of mr. howard hankins, who is a business owner of hampton roads materials. it's an recycling and mr. hankins owned as much as 600 acres here and has partitioned off a couple hundred of that acres to the nearby golf course. and this is a small sliver of. what's remaining of the 400 acres, the significance of that

is that he was involved in partially involved in the creation of the original president's park, which was a tourist site, 12 miles from here. that was open from 2004 until 2010. that was the home. all 40 to 2 of these sculptures. and he actually was also instrumental, commissioned in 2010 to come take these sculptures. when that park went bankrupt and put them in his stone crusher. so he did not have the heart to do that. thank god and spent a considerable amount of own money to transport every one of these one by one from that bankrupt. nonfunctional park 12 miles from here to his property here as a way to store them temporarily until he figured out what he

wanted to do with them. the sculptor of. all of these is a gentleman by the name of david addicks, not as in a home attic, but i see. yes. and he if he's still alive, probably in his early nineties, he was painter from, an artist based out of houston who was visiting friends in canada and it was coming home way of mount rushmore and became so inspired by what he saw that he wanted to recreate the president's albeit on a smaller scale. and he ended up three sets of them, one of which went to a little town, south dakota, to a park is also now abandoned. he has a set himself off in his now, i believe, defunct studio in houston. and was the third set that was in president's park. and is now here in the little town of crocker and here we are

you know nine years later and you can see that all of them have experienced a significant amount of decay and a result of that, they've kind of become this internet. i'm not going to say they have become this popular primarily because they're falling apart. but i suspect that has something to do with it. so here they sit, all 42 of them in this field, and we now have hundreds of people per month that come down here to to them. because mr. hankins has been so generous in allowing that opportunity, they were off limits for a number of years when they originally were moved here. he wanted the the public to enjoy them. so he actually kept it open for everybody come down. the problem with that is there were young children climbing on

these 18 foot tall statues and the liability was immense so justify horribly so it became completely private. and the only people that were getting back here were trespassers. so i proposed something to him that allowed him or allowed the public to enjoy him that would protect legally in the form of a waiver form, a modest entrance fee for, the walking tour, which is getting ready to occur here in about an hour. and then we also have separate evening photoshoots designed for intermediate and advanced photographers where we come in here at night and shoot them under the stars. and and it's been a wonderful thing far. and that's kind of we're at a standstill now until. we figure out what the future of these heads are going to be. they were originally to go somewhere in the northeast that has temporarily been put hold

and. there's all kinds of other proposals on the table for people that either want to buy them, move them or possibly even create like a studio here. but until that happens and until there some clarity to that situation on random weekends i conduct tours down here so people are able to enjoy anyone know what his nickname was oak ridge why they call him hickory because he was tough is old hickory he was one bad dude. the interesting thing was it was kind of an engineering as to how he moved because despite the fact that these are hollow they also anywhere between 17,020 2,000 pounds and not that people would find that very easy transport these albeit only for

12 miles. so what he ended up doing you'll see that every one of these presidents has a hole intentionally put in the top of their head. the purpose of that was to expose the steel, those skeleton that one of mr. hankins excavate towers to gain enough purchase of lift to be able to it onto a flatbed full of tires and then they strapped them down and moved them here one by one. now, the interesting thing that is not all of these sculptures are the same size. there's 42 of them here, despite fact that there are 43 presidents represented. that's because grover cleveland served twice on successively. but the sculptor decided that he wanted to make seven of them grander than the remaining 35.

and that was because he thought that would be neat to recognize the quote unquote, vip presidents in a larger format. so seven of the presidents, including george andrew abe, both roosevelts, woodrow wilson and then actually thomas jefferson in the back are the seven presidents whom he identified through interviewing historians, presidential experts, academic history teachers, such professors who they thought were the seven most influential presidents. so that's why they are 25% larger than the remaining 35. so it was pretty easy for him to take the 35 smaller ones first and move them here, stack them in rows of 11 for some reason, thomas jefferson, who in my

opinion deserves to be up front with george and abe, got stuck in the back. and that is for reasons that are unbeknownst to me. he is the only vip who isn't in the front row. all the other ones were stacked because his excavator had capacity to lift each and one of them based on its max capacity of lift. the problem encountered was when he got to the larger presidents. one excavator one work so he had use two and was able to successfully then start stacking the larger presidents in front starting woodrow wilson, teddy, fdr. but then he realized that if he took the final three washington, jackson, lincoln, that it would be obscured to the remaining

ones. so he had to pick and choose which three he wanted to come up front. and these are the three that he chose. and we're going to talk about why in a moment so that that is kind how the schematic and the order of them occurred it's not chronological like it's fairly random but see most of the smaller ones are set and the larger ones are are up front. george. is one of the favorites and he obviously was born. he was born, i think around five miles from here in a little place called creek, virginia, in westmoreland county. and he was a a lot of people think he wore a wig. he actually didn't he powdered his hair. he was a distiller of whiskey and what he called the father of the american fox hound.

he had at any point up to 30 different fox hounds, two of which were named drunkard. and tipsy and he had an intense fear of being buried alive, which, believe it or not, was not uncommon. back in the 1700s, people were dying of things like smallpox and cholera and rather, people suspected that those that had passed were actually catatonic from their diseases and were sometimes prematurely buried. so he lived with an intense fear of being buried alive. he is will never be outranked militarily. he has his own military ranking above and beyond a five star general that forces him to never be outranked. and he was also the only president to never live in the white house. it wasn't until john adams came around to where he began to occupy the white house. he did die from, i believe, like

a throat infection or tracheal inflammation and or something. and he was being they called bloodletting where they were bloodletting him and his last words to the world were to swell. andrew although it's tough to see from here he had some actual he's the only sculpture that mr. hankins attempted to clean up and coincidentally he was trying to clean some decay on his cheeks. oddly enough, andrew jackson spent most of his life with a scar on his cheek because when he was a young, i believe, for the tennessee militia, he took a sword to the face from a soldier after president jackson refused to shine his boots boots. he died, i believe, with a couple bullets in his chest, not

from being shot, but had engaged several others in gun duels. and his nickname was old hickory because people said he was tough old hickory. the other interesting fact about president jackson is that he apparently taught his parrot, his pet, how to swear, and that sometimes became problematic in the white house for some of his guests. so people often ask me on tours when i would deliver. they understand why abraham lincoln and george washington are up front, but they question why andrew jackson front and center, all three of these are on bills, dollar bills, monetary, american currency. but people suspect rightfully so that thomas jefferson and fdr should probably be up here front and center with the big three. and i don't disagree with that. so i finally asked the owner why

andrew jackson ended up here front center, and his response me was very interesting. he said, well, that's simple. he's got really pretty hair and i like his epaulets. so anyhow, and he does, he's got nice hair and great epaulets. i started these tours and talking legitimate presidential accomplishments and nobody cared. people entertained. then i started how andrew jackson's parrot squared and people love this stuff. people want to hear silly odd stuff. president lincoln, the tallest of all of presidents at six foot four, which pretty darn tall for back in the day, contrary to that shortest president was a president, james madison, who was four foot shorter than that. he was five foot four and 99 pounds. president lincoln. obviously in the ford theater.

and he he actually predicted his death from a dream that it the night before ulysses grant was supposed to have been his guest that night who had bail at the last and on president lincoln's desk in the oval office night, he was assassinated was legislation to create the secret service, albeit not presidential protection, primarily for counterfeiting purposes, but i thought that was kind of ironic. he was also a world class wrestler and wrestled in than 300 matches, losing only one of them. someone told me that he is enshrined in the like the world wrestling hall fame, which i thought was interesting interesting. coincidentally, i want to show you something over here. of all 42 sculptures, the only one to take a spill off of a

flatbed. was abe. that hole in the back of his was not in, although the one on the top was that occurred when he fell off of the flatbed, which i thought was pretty ironic. so that's a little something about these three. the remaining 39 statues are kind of clustered and this patch of grass in this in the summertime, you can't see the hole side of this entire cluster because it's so overgrown and basically becomes a forest. at first i had a problem with that because it was obscured of to a lot of the presidents. then we kind of realized that it made for neat photography and almost like this creepy, cool haunted forest that you can walk through all of these leaves and bushes and look at these presidents that are kind of, you know, and in the shrubbery, but

it finally became so overwhelming that. the groundskeeper came and took it all down. but it's beginning to kind of grow back right now? as you can see, some of the here are obscure by, you know, weeds and and other dead grass that's growing up. this is james buchanan who is the only one of all the presidents to kind of be staring down. if you look at the orientation of all of their heads, most of them are staring straight at you. he has this look where the angle of his head is looking right down at you and whether it's in the day or at night, it kind of the super creepy feeling that makes me uneasy someone else. also once told me that he was the only of all of the presidents to never marry which

i thought was an interesting. the bearded presidents hays grant garfield old they all to look kind of similar you can tell that all of the neckwear from every sculptor is times which is neat you can see here that there's some military garb with grant where he's got some stars on his shoulders. and if you go down to george junior and you'll notice that he's got some elephants on his tie, which i thought was interesting. james garfield from what i've read had an interesting talent where he could write a sentence. with one hand in latin while simultaneously writing a another sentence with his other hand in greek, which i thought was fascinating.

bill clinton is sometimes difficult for people to recognize. don't know why i think he's pretty true to form, but he sits there in the back and he looks fairly young. gerald ford is next to him over here. and the interesting thing about gerald ford is he was the most difficult cult of all of the sculptures, too, for mr. addicts to create because his features are so unpronounceable. contrary. president lincoln the easiest for him to make because his features are so pronounced i thought was interesting. thomas jefferson is can see is probably the third most decayed president here if you see that he's starting to fall apart pretty bad and and he died so

i've heard on the day as john adams hours apart albeit on july the fourth which i thought was an interesting piece of history on dry days in the summer, often we allow our guests to walk through here, but you can see that this area is pretty wet and we've had some significant weather here lately. we've never seen snakes back here, but it looks like it's an area that is completely conducive to snakes. so i always make sure that my guests are are mindful of that as they're walking here. there's all kinds of different weather where will conduct these tours. the neatest thing seen is a bald eagle circling george's head. we've been out here an electrical thunderstorms at night where it looks there's these crawler lightning strikes that are coming out of his

mouth. i have not been back here in the winter time, but i know there's a lot of people that would absolutely die to photograph or see these in the snow so that'll be that'll be very exciting and then fog fog would be the perfect element to see these and experience them come over here. this is one of my personal favorites. this fdr who died his fourth term, the hall on the top of his head is pretty pronounced relative to the holes on the rest of their heads. i don't know why. but you can kind of see the steel infrastructure out of the top of it. he supposedly was a victim of polio and i've read somewhere that some current physicians nowadays aren't absolutely convinced that he had polio rather a disorder called barry

syndrome, regardless of the authenticity of that claim. the interesting about it is because he either was a victim of polio or purportedly had polio that the because he was such a high profile individual, lot of people save thousands of were saved because of the acceleration of the timeline and the appropriation of the funds that ultimately ended in the vaccine created by salk, which i thought was an interesting tidbit of information. this is george bush jr, who is also highly decayed if you can zoom in on his tie, you can see where he's got his elephants. a lot of people love seeing that. the most decay president is woodrow wilson. pretty much looks like he has a leprosy and the question comes up, is there a rhyme or reason

as to why these guys are. decaying at a faster than the remaining and i just don't understand or know if there is any reason behind it perhaps he's in a wind pattern or rain pattern that makes him more susceptible to cracking. i just don't know. but what i do know is if you come look pretty closely at, this president, who was one of eight virginia native presidents born and raised in stanton look and who his right eyeball but that a wasp's nest which is not uncommon often you'll see them in the nostrils of the sculptors as well a few of are starting to miss some parts lyndon johnson is starting to lose the end of his nose. ronald reagan was one of them that was struck by lightning a few years back. but he's been success successively cleaned since and

the most difficult of all of the president to identify is back here behind president. no one's ever this right. as a matter of fact, i had to really study him hard to figure out who that was that is warren harding. and behind him is john adams, who was tough to see because of all of the overgrowth the neatest that i've come across through a lot of my research is reagan when he was asked what his proudest accomplishment in life was it had nothing to do with his presidency he nor his acting career his proudest accomplishment in is that he claims to have saved. 77 lives from when he was a young man as lifeguard. and i thought that was very interesting.

the question always comes up will obama be here or was he ever here? the answer to that question is the goal for the original park was every time a president to come into office that a two foot tall prototype was going to be made as a sample approved upon and, then brought full scale. so when obama coming into office, they approached the owner the park at the time and who i think already recognized the financial difficulties that were going on declined for financial reasons to go full scale the obama so they just kept the little miniature obama who lived in this green shipping container along with a miniature white house for many, many years unbeknownst to me one of my photography students that was here for a night workshop decided that when i left, he came back and stolen, took them.

so that didn't go over very well at all fortunately, this whole place is rigged with. security cameras. we figured out who it was he claimed to have had a weak moment and not to be kleptomaniac, but ended up basically bringing baby obama back. so we keep him lock and key have only brought him out five times, sometimes with security guards because he is very important and we don't want him to get stolen again is there a trump. no, there is not. although owner has bought a little baby one about this big. the reason i got involved with this is by secondary. i am a photographer and i specialize in basically structures. i love everything abandoned photography homes, churches, schools, hospitals, diners name it if it's decaying to. me it's interesting that hobby turned into a sizable instagram

following and that turned into a coffee table book called a beautifully broken virginia that coffee table book started viral, and the virginia museum of arts gift shop, so they ended up me on faculty as an adjunct speaker. and when i've got free time on the weekends, send me around the state to storytelling because all of these beautiful places in virginia, stories behind them, much like you've just heard a lot of the public really enjoys the back story they love the pictures but they want to know there's no closure until they get the back story so i started doing that for the museum wrecking guys, how much the public loved that and then started doing storytelling of abandoned virginia on my own. that started in libraries at into theaters and now i do those at the actual abandoned places themselves so i had approached the owner about that told that i

could protect him legally, make him some money to go back into his foundation and then allow the public to come back here to enjoy these. so he allowed me to do that and it's just kind of blossomed ever since here and in other places this is by far the most spectacular that you guys have been. great. any questions? thank you. thank you. all right. i'm going to check on my wife and i. come on back. you guys have until 4:00? yeah. why why are you attracted to abandoned and places? two reasons. number one, i love the texture. i love the mood, love the mystery. that's just something from a photographic perspective that i absolutely. but i'm also a type-a personality. i love the social part about it. and me, the challenge of going out into the knocking on doors, walk into fire stations, interviewing, hanging out in diners, loitering at gas stations, all in the spirit of meeting fellow virginians. to me is enjoyable.

i love it. i absolutely love it. so what started as a simple hobby to grow an instagram following has quickly graduated a pretty strong devotion to allowing virginians develop a deeper appreciation of pass through visual experience. cities like this.

thanks so much, everybody. so this is obviously more material than i can cover in an. so this is a snapshot of the history of reproductive rights and justice starting from the 19th century to the present. it's also something that's in some ways very hard to lecture about now because it's i as as professor lawson said in one of the main historians of this stuff, and i'm also living