Photos

A lone cowboy walks past the 12½-foot bust of Abraham Lincoln, atop a 30-foot pedestal, and is dwarfed by its height. The sculpture stands along the old Lincoln Highway (a good deal of which is now covered by Interstate 80), about seven miles east of Laramie.

This sculpture, by Robert Russin, the late University of Wyoming art professor, is perhaps the most tangible remaining remembrance of the Great Emancipator along that road. According to a plaque at eye level with the base of this towering memorial, the state of Wyoming erected it in 1959, in honor of the sesquicentennial of Lincoln's birth. The plaque is headlined by one of the president's timeless challenges: "We must think anew and act anew."

According to the Wikipedia article on Russin, the sculptor died in Los Angeles two years ago at the age of 93. His son, Joe, obtained permission from the Wyoming Department of Transportation Director and Department of Parks and Cultural Resources to construct a small stone cairn near the Lincoln bust to hold the urns of his father, Robert, and mother, Edele. Russin had wanted to be buried near the statue.

I've posted a close-up on TrekLens "Lincoln's Lofty Remembrance." You may notice in that photo much greater clarity and detail on Lincoln's face. That's due in part to the closer vantage point, but also from metering the face from that nearer spot, too.

Trimmed in ZoomBrowserEX, with minor levels and curve corrections; sized and sharpened for TE in PaintDotNet.