Log In


Reset Password
News Education Local News Nation & World New Mexico

No Mount Rushmore planned for Highway 3

Rockfall work won’t result in public artwork

When the Colorado Department of Transportation completed its monthslong construction project of the U.S. Highway 550/160 intersection, the city of Durango gifted the public with a commemorative artwork, “Arc of History” – a sculpture so breathtaking that many people in Durango seemed to faint on looking at it.

Last week, CDOT started another construction project on Colorado Highway 3 to remove tons of rocks, begging the question: Can Durangoans look forward to another aesthetic masterstroke involving rocks?

On Friday, calls about the possibility of a Highway 3 sculpture installation to the city manager’s office – where city staff are immersed in the tense process of drafting the city’s annual budget – initially were met with peals of laughter.

“Sorry – this is the week from you-know-where. That’s hilarious. You just made my day,” said Karen Pease, the city manager’s administrative aide, who picked up the phone.

Later in the afternoon, City Manager Assistant Sherri Dugdale responded by email, saying, “I have been trying to come up with a clever response for your question about art on Hwy 3 – something like CDOT is trying to create their own version of Mt. Rushmore – but it seems that I’ve been in too many budget meetings this week to be witty.

“The short answer is ‘no.’ We are not planning any art for Hwy 3 at this time.”

In the throes of budgeting, the city of Durango – usually a proud advocate for its $1.2 million collection of public art – may be missing out on an opportunity to shore up its rock-based works.

Done right, rock-based artwork puts small towns on the map: for instance, Stonehenge.

“Arc of History,” the most recent rock-based artwork to enter the city’s collection, cost $28,000 and is almost entirely composed of local rocks.

It turns out that the Highway 3 construction project will yield about 500 to 1,000 tons of local rock – for free.

According to Nancy Shanks, CDOT’s communications director for Region 5, all the rock that crews remove from around Highway 3 technically belongs to the contractor, TK Construction.

But Tom Allen, project engineer with the consulting firm Yeh and Associates, said as of Friday, TK Construction harbors no artistic ambitions when it comes to the rock around Highway 3. In fact, he said, the firm is quite willing to give it away.

Allen said TK Construction will be dumping all the rock extracted from around Highway 3 in a local gravel pit – as much as 30 or 40 tons of rock a day.

“We contacted the city to see if they wanted it – for art or landscaping. But I don’t think they want it,” Allen said.

By some lights, Highway 3 is a blank canvas primed for beautification – you can drive from one end to the other without glimpsing any public artwork involving rocks, nor even a mud bench.

Yet Allen said no “particular spot screams public art.”

Asked what he thought of “Arc of History,” Allen said, “It’s fine.”

When CDOT’s Shanks was asked whether any local rock left over from a Highway 3 sculpture could be added to “Arc of History,” she said, “I don’t know. You’d have to ask the city.”

cmcallister@durangoherald.com

An earlier version of this story misstated the amount of rock crews will remove from the area surrounding Highway 3 in the course of the construction project.



Reader Comments