about the 42 giant busts about american presidents created for an exhibit in williamsburg, virginia. it's called presidents park. it opened in 2004. after that park closed in 2010, the busts were transported to a private property, where they've been decaying ever since. we met photographer, author and storyteller john plashal, who led us on a walking tour and photogra photography clinic to focus on those busts. that begins right now on c-span3. so you are now currently on the property of mr. howard hankins, a business owner of hamilton road materials. it's an industrial recycling area. mr. hankins owned as much as 600 acres here and partitioned off a couple hundred acres to the nearby golf course. and this is a small sliver of what's remaining of the 400

acres. the significance of that he was involved, partially involved in the creation of the original presidents park, a tourist site 12 myles from here that was open from 2004 until 2010. that was the home of all 42 of these sculptures. he was actually also instrumental and 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 his 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 named of david adickes. not in the home attic but a-d-i-c-k-e-s. and he, if he's still alive, is probably in his early 90s. he was a painter and artist out of houston who was visiting friends in canada and was coming home by way of mount rushmore and became so inspired by what he saw, he wanted to re-create the presidents, albeit on a smaller scale. he ended up creating three sets of them. one of which went to a little town in south dakota, to a park that is also now abandoned. he has a set himself in his now i believe defunct studio in houston. and this was the third set that

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

these 18-foot-tall statues and the liability was a mess. so justifiably so, it became completely private. 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 them that would protect him legally in the form of a waiver form, a modest entrance fee for the walking tour, which is getting ready to occur here about an hour. and then we also have separate evening photo shoots designed for intermediate and advanced photographers where we come in here at night and shoot them under the stars. and it's been a wonderful thing so far. 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 slated to go somewhere in the northeast. that has temporarily been put on 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 a studio here. but until that happens, until there's some clarity to that situation, on random weekends i conduct tours down here so people are able to enjoy. did anyone know what his nickname was? >> old hickory. >> why did they call him old hickory? >> i don't know. >> because he was tough as old hickory. he was one bad dude. the interesting thing was, it was kind of an engineering feat as to how he moved them because despite the fact these are hollow, they are also anywhere between 17,000 and 22,000 pounds. and not that many people would find that very easy to transport these, albeit for 12 miles.

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

and that was because he thought it would be neat to recognize the quote/unquote vip presidents in the larger format. so seven of the presidents, including george, andrew, abe, both roosevelts, woodrow wilson, and then actually thomas jefferson, who's in the back, are the seven presidents whom he identified through interviewing historians, presidential experts, academic history teachers and such, professors, who they thought were the seven most influential presidents. and that's why they are 25% larger than the remaining 35. so it's pretty easy for him to take the 35 smaller ones first and move them here and 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 unknownst to me. he's the only vip president who isn't in the front row. all of the other ones were stacked because his excavator had the capacity to lift each and every one of them based on its max capacity of lift. the problem he encountered was when he got to the larger presidents, one excavator wouldn't work so he had to use two. and was able to successfully then start stacking the larger presidents in front, starting with woodrow wilson, teddy roosevelt, f.d.r. but then he realized that if he took the final three, washington, jackson and lincoln, that it would be obscuretive to

the remaining ones. so he had to pick and choose which three he wanted to come up front. these are the three he chose. we will talk about why in a moment. so that is kind of how the schematic and the order of them occurred. it's not chronologic. it's fairly random. but you see most of the smaller ones are set back and the larger ones are up front. george is one of the favorites, and he obviously was born -- he was born i think around 95 miles from here, a little place called pope's creek virginia in westmoreland county. he was a redhead. 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 foxhound. he had at any given point up to 30 different foxhounds. two of which were named drunkard and tipsy. he had an intense fear of being buried alive, which believe it or not, was not terribly uncommon back in the 1700s. people were dyeing of things like smallpox and cholera and rather people suspected those who had passed were actually catatonic from their diseases and sometimes prematurely buried. so he lived with an intense fear of being buried alive. he 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. 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 or something. they called is bloodletting, where they were bloodletting him, and his last words to the world with 'tis well. andrew, although it's tough to see from here, he had some actual -- he's the only sculpture here that mr. hankins attempted to clean up. and coincidentally, he was trying to clean up 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 man, i believe for the tennessee militia, he took a sword to the face from a soldier after president jackson refused to shine his 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 as tough as old hickory. the only interesting fact about president jackson is he apparently taught his parrot, his pet parrot, how to swear. and that sometimes became problematic in the white house for some of his guests. people often ask me on tours when i would deliver it, they understand why abraham lincoln and george washington are up front, but they question why andrew jackson is front and center. all three of these are on bills, dollar bills, monetary american currency. but people suspect, rightfully so, thomas jefferson and/or f.d.r. 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 and center, and his response to me was very interesting. he said well, that's simple, he's got really pretty hair and i like his he aleapts. he does. he has nice air and bright he aleapts. i started doing these tours and talking about legitimate president accomplishments and people didn't care. nobody was entertained. i started saying andrew jackson's were weird and people love this stuff. people want to hear the silly, odd stuff. president lincoln, the tallest of all of the presidents at 6'4", which was pretty darn tall for back in the day, contrary to that the shortest president was the president james madison, who was a full foot shorter than that. he was 5'4" and 99 pounds. president lincoln, obviously,

assassinated in the ford theater, and he actually predicted his death from a dream that he had had the night before. ulis s. grant was supposed to have been his guest that night, who had to bail at the last minute. and on president lincoln's desk in the oval office the night he was assassinated there was legislation to create the secret service. albeit not for presidential protection, primarily for counterfeiting purposes, but i thought that was kind of ironic. he was also a world class wrestler and supposedly wrestled in more than 300 matches, losing only one of them. someone told me he is enshrined in the world wrestling hall of fame, which i thought was 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 head was not intentional. the one on the top was. that occurred when he fell off 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 together in this patch of grass. in the summertime, you can't even see the whole right side of this entire cluster because it's so overgrown and is basically what becomes a forest. at first i had a problem with that because it was obscuretive of a lot of presidents but then we realized it made for kind of neat photography. and almost like this creepy, cold, haunted forest you could walk through all of these leaves and bushes and look up at the presidents that are kind of

enshrouded 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 now, as you can see. some of the presidents here are obscured by weeds and other dead grass that's growing up. this is james buchanan, who is the only one of all of the presidents to kind of be staring down. if you look at the orientation of all of their heads, most all 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 a day or at night, he kind of imparts this super-creepy feeling that makes me uneasy. someone also once told me he was the only of all of the presidents to never marry, which

i thought was an interesting fact. the bearded presidents hayes, grant, garfield, they all to me looked kind of similar. you could tell that all of the neckwear from every sculpture is time specific, which is neat. you can see here there's some military garb with grant where he's got some stars on his shoulders. and if you go down to george bush jr., you will notice he has an elephant on his tie, which i thought was interesting. james garfield from what i read had an interesting talent where he could write a sentence with one hand in latin while simultaneously writing another sentence with his other hand in greek, which i thought was

fascinating. bill clinton is sometimes difficult for people to recognize. i 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 right next to him over here, and the interesting thing about gerald ford is he was the most difficult of all of the sculptures to -- for mr. adickes to create because his features are so unpronounced. contrary president lincoln was the easiest for him to make because his features are so pronounced, which i thought was interesting. thomas jefferson, as you can see, is probably the third most decayed president here. you see that he's starting to fall apart pretty bad.

and he died, so i've heard, on the same day as john adams, four hours apart. albeit on july the 4th, 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 this area is pretty wet. we've had some significant weather here lately. we've never seen snakes back here but it looks like it's an area completely conducive to snakes so i tulz make sure that my guests are mindful of that as they're walking through here. there's all kinds of different weather where we will conduct these tours. the neatest thing i have seen is a bald eagle circling george's head. we've been out here during electrical thunderstorms at night where it looks like there's caller strikes coming out of f.d.r.'s mouth.

back here it was difficult to photograph or see these in the snow. so that will be very exciting. and then fog, fog would be the perfect element to see these and experience them. come on over here, this is one of my personal favorites. this is f.d.r., who died in his fourth term. the hole on the top of his head is pretty pronounced relative hot holes on the rest of their heads. i don't know why, but you can kind of see the steel infrastructure coming out of the top of it. he supposedly was a victim of polio and i have read somewhere that that some current physicians nowadays aren't absolutely convinced that he had polio, rather a disorder called

guan beret's syndrome. the interesting thing about it is because he was either a victim of polio or purportedly had polio, because he was such a hi high-profile individual, some say thousands of lives were sad because of the acceleration of the timeline and appropriations of fund that normally ended up in the vaccine created by jonas 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 decayed president is woodrow wilson. he pretty much looks like he has leprosy. the question always comes up, is there a rhyme or reason as to

why these guys are decaying at a faster rate 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 at his right eyeball. that is a wasp's nest, which is not uncommon. often you will see them in the nostrils of the sculpture as well. a few of them 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 successfully cleaned up since.

and probably the most difficult of all of the presidents to identify is back here behind president reagan. no one's ever gotten 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 is tough to see because of all of the overgrowth. the neatest fact that i've come across through a lot of my research is ronald reagan, when he was asked what his proudest accomplishment in life was, it had nothing to do with his presidency nor his acting career. his proudest accomplishment in life is he claims to have saved 77 lives from when he was a young man as a lifeguard. and i thought that was very interesting. the question always comes up,

will obama ever be here or was he ever here? the answer to that question is the goal for the original park was every time a president was 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 was coming into office, they approached the owner of the park at the time, who i think had already recognized the financial difficulties that were going on, declined for financial reasons to go full scale on the obama. so they just kept the little miniature obama, who lived in this green shipping container, along with the 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 stole him.

took him. so that didn't go over very well at all. fortunately this whole place is rigged with security cameras, and we figured out who it was. he claimed to have a weak moment and not to be klepto maniacal but ended up bringing basically baby obama back. so we now keep him lock and key and 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 the owner has brought a little baby one about this big. the reason i got involved with this is my secondary profession, i am a photographer and i specialize in basically abandoned structures. i love everything about abandoned photography, homes, churches, schools, hospitals, diners, you name it. if it's decaying, to me that's interesting.

that hobby turned into a sizable instagram following and that turned into a coffee table book called "beautifully broken virginia." that coffee table book started going viral in the museum of virginia fine arts gift shop so they ended up putting me on faculty as an adjunct speaker and when i have free time over the weekends they send me around the state to story talk. because a lot of these places in virginia have stories behind them, much like you just heard. a lot of the public enjoy hearing the backstory. they love the picture but they want to know, there's no closure until they get the backstory. so i started doing that for the museum, recognized how much the public loved that and started doing professional storytelling in virginia on my own. that started in libraries, it escalated into theaters and now i do those at the actual abandoned places themselves. so i had approached the owner about that, told him that i

could protect him legally, make him some money, to go back on the foundation and allow the public to come back and enjoy these. so he allowed me to do that and it's just blossomed ever since here in other places. this has been by far the most spectacular though. you guys are great. any questions? >> thank you. >> i will go check on my wife and come back. you guys have until 4:00. >> why are you attracted to an ban danned and decaying places? >> two reasons. number one, i love the texture, i love the mystery. that's just something from a photographic perspective i absolutely love. i'm also a type a personality, love the social part of it. to me the challenge going out in the community, knocking on doors, walking into fire stations, interviewing loggers, 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 into a pretty strong devotion to allowing virginians to develop a deeper appreciation of their past. through visual experiences like this. ♪

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service by your television provider. next on the presidency, matthew costello talks about his new book, "the property of the nation: george washington's tomb, mount vernon, and the memory of the first president." we hear about ways that americans remembered and celebrated george washington in the 19th century. and he talks about how the freed and enslaved people on washington's mount vernon estate helped shape the historical narrative about him. mr. costello is an historian at the white house historical association, which hosted this event. >> good evening, everyone. there we go. i would like to welcome my friends who are joining us by c-span and those who are here with us tonight who are the really smart people in washington because you have chosen to be here above