differs from all other political coverage for one simple reason. it's c-span. this year we're bringing you an unfiltered view of the people seeking to steer government this november. in other words, your future. this election season go deep, direct and unfiltered. see the biggest picture for yourself and make up your own mind with c-span's campaign 2020 brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> so you are now currently on the property of mr. howard hankins. it's an industrial recycling area. mr. hankins owned 600 acres here

and partitioned some of it off to a nearby golf course. this is a small sliver of what's remaining of the 400 acres. he was involved in -- partially involved in the creation of the president's park which was a tourist site 12 miles from here that was open from 2004 until 2010 that was the home of all 42 of these sculptures. he actually was also instrumental and commissioned in 2010 to come take these sculptures when that park went bankrupt and put them in his stone crusher. he did not have the heart to do that, thank god. he spent a considerable amount of his own money to transport everyone 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 these is a name by david adickes. if he's still alive, he's in his early 90s. he was a painter based out of houston who was visiting friends in canada. he was coming home by way of mt. rushmore. he wanted to recreate the president's, albeit on a smaller scale. one went to a town in south dakota. he has a set himself in his now, i believe, defunct studio in houston. this was the third set that was

in president's park and is now here in the little town of croaker. here we are, you know, nine years later and you can see that all of them have experienced a significant amount of decay and as a result of that they've 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. here they sit, all 42, in this field and we have hundreds of people per month that come down here to see 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 public to enjoy them.

he actually kept it open 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 immense. justifiably so it become private. the only people getting back here were trespassers. i proposed something to him that allowed him -- or allowed the public to enjoy him that would protect him legally in the form of a waiver, a modest entrance fee for the walker tour which is getting ready to occur in about an hour. we have special evening photo suits designed for photographers where we shoot them under the stars. it's been a wonderful thing. we're at a stand still until we figure out what the futures of these heads were going to be.

they were originally slated to go somewhere in the northeast. that's been temporarily put on hold. 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. until that happened and until there's 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? >> old hickory. >> why did they call him old hickory? 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. despite the fact they're hollow, they're between 17,000 and 22,000 pounds.

not that many people would find that very easy to transport these, albeit for only 12 miles. 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 endoskeleton that enabled to have enough purchase of lift to put on a front bed of tires. they moved them here then one by one. the interesting thing about that is not all of these sculptures are the same size. there's 42 here despite the fact that there are 43 presidents represented. that's because grover cleveland served twice. the skuculpt oor decided he wan

to make a few of them grander because he wanted to recognize the, quote, vip presidents. seven presidents including george, andrew, abe, both roosevelts, woodrow wilson and thomas jefferson are the seven presidents who he identified through interviewing his totorh, who they thought were the seven most influential presidents. that's why they're 25% larger than the remaining. it was easy 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 upfront with george and abe, got stuck in the back. that is for reasons that are unbeknownst to me. all the others were stacks because the excavator had the capacity to lift each and every one of them. the problem he encountered was when we got to the larger presidents, one excavator wouldn't work. so he had to use two. he was able to successfully then start stacking the larger presidents in front starting with woodrow wilson, teddy roosevelt, fdr. then he realized that, if he took the final three,

washington, jackson and lincoln, that it would be obscured to the remaining ones. he had to pick and choose which three he wanted up front. these are the three he chose and we'll talk about why in a moment. that is kind of how the schematic and the order occurred. it's fairly random. most of the smaller ones are setback and the larger ones are upfront. george is one of the favorites. he obviously was born around 95 miles from here in popes creek, virginia, in westmoreland county. he was a red head. a lot of people think he wore a wig. he didn't. he powdered his hair.

he was a distiller of whiskey and what he called a father of the american fox hound. he had at any time up to 30 different fox hounds two were named drunkard and trixie. he had an intense fear of being buried alive. people were dying of things like small position and people suspected that those who passed were actually ck catatonic and sometimes buried alive. he will never be out ranked militarily. he was a five-star general and will never be out ranked. he was the only president to not live in the white house.

it wasn't until john adams. he died from i believe a throat infection or something and he was blood letting. they were blood letting him and his last words to the world were 'tis swell. andrew, although it's tough the see from here, he had some actual -- he's the only sculpture here that mr mrmr. hankins attempted to clean up. 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. when he was a young man i believe for the tennessee militia he took a sword to the face after president jackson

refused to shine his boots. he died with a couple bullets in his chest, not from being shot, but engaged several others in gun duals. his name was old hickory because people said he was tough as old hickory. the other interesting fact about president jackson is he apparently taught his pet parrot how to swear. 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 is upfront. they question why andrew jackson is. all three of these are on dollar bills, american currency. people suspect that thomas jefferson and/or fdr should be

front and center and i don't disagree with that. i asked the owner why andrew jackson ended up here. he said, that's simple, he's got really pretty hair and i like his epilettes. he does. i started doing these tours and talked about presidential accomplishments and nobody cared. then i talked about the president's parrot swearing and they loved that. president lincoln, the tallest of the presidents at 6'4" contrary to that the shortest was james hadman who was 5'6".

president lincoln obviously assassinated in the ford theater. he actually predicted his death from a dream that he had the night before. ulysses s. grant was supposed to be his guest that night an d he bailed. on the president's desk was legislation to create the secret service, primarily for counterfeiting purposes. he was also a world class wrestler and supposedly wrestled in more than 300 matches, losing only one of them. someone told me he's 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 the flat bed 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 of the flat bed which i thought was pretty ironic. that's a little something about these three. the remaining 39 statues are kind of clustered together in this patch of grass. in the summer time you can't even see the hole right side of this entire cluster because it's so overgrown and becomes a forest. at first i had the problem with that because it was obscuring to a lot of presidents. then we realized it made for neat photography and almost like this creepy cool haunted forest

you could walk through all these leaves and bushes and look up at this presidents that are ev enshrouded in the shrubbery. the grounds keeper came and took it down, but it's growing back now. some of the presidents here are obscured by weeds and other dead grass that's growing up. this is james buchanan is the only one of the presidents to be staring down. most all are staring straight at you. he has this look where the angle of his head is looking down at you. whether it's in the day or at night, it kind of imparts this super creepy feeling that makes

me uneasy. someone also told me he was the only of all the presidents to never marry. i thought that was an interesting fact. the bearded presidents hays, grant, garfield, they all to me look kind of similar. you can tell that all of the neck wear from every sculpture is time specific which is neat. you can see here that there's some military garb with grant where he has stars on his shoulder. if you go down to george bush jr., you'll notice he hazel fs t elephants on his tie which i thought was interesting. james garfield could write a sentence with one hand in latin while simultaneously writing another sentence with his other

hand in greek. i thought that was fascinating. bill clinton is sometimes difficult for people to recognize. i don't know why. i think he's pretty true to form. he sits there in the back and he looks fairly young. gerald ford is right next to him over here. the interesting thing about ford is he was the most difficult of all of the sculptures 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 he's starting to fall apart pretty bad. 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 quests to walk through here. you can see this area is pretty wet. we've had 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. i always make sure my guests are mindful of that as they're walking through here. there's all kinds of different weather where we'll conduct these tours. the neatest thing i've seen is a bald eagle circling george's head. we've been out here in electrical thunderstorms at

night where it looks like crawler lightning strikes are coming out of fdr's mouth. i've not been back here in the winter, but i know there's a lot of people that would absolutely die 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 fdr, who died in his fourth term. the hole 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 see the steel infrastructure coming out of the top of it. he supposedly was a victim of polio and i read somewhere that

some current physicians nowadays aren't convinced he had polio. regardless of the authenticity of the claim, the interesting thing of it is because he purportedly had polio, a lot of people say thousands of lives were saved because of the acceleration of the timeline and appropriations of the funds that ended up in the vaccine of jonas salk. this is george bush jr. you can see where he's got his elephants on his ties. a lot of people love seeing that. the most decayed president is woodrow wilson.

pretty much looks like he has leprosy. the question comes up is there a rhyme or reason as to why these guys are decaying at a faster rate than the remaining. 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 don't know. if you come look closely at this president who was one of eight virginian native presidents, look in his right eyeball. that is a wasps nest which is not uncommon. often you see them in the nostrils of the sculptures. 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. he's been successfully cleaned up since. probably the most difficult of all of the presidents to identify is back here behind president reagan. no one's ever got this right. as a matter of fact i had to really study him hard to figure out who that was. that is warren harding. 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 or acting career. his proudest accomplishment in life is he claims to have saved

77 lives from when he was a young man as a life guard. 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 on and brought to scale. 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 going on, did ecli for financial reasons to go full scale on obama. they kept the little miniature obama who lived in this green shipping container along with the miniature white house for many years. unbeknown to me, one of my

photography students that was here for a night workshop decided when i left, he came back and stole him, took him. 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 a weak moment and ended upbringing baby obama back. 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 bought a little baby one about this big. the reason i got involved with this is by secondary profession i'm a photographer and i specialize in basically abandoned structures. i love everything about abandoned homes, churches,

schools, hospitals, diners. if it's decaying, to me it's amazing. that hobby turned into a coffee table book. that book started to go viral in the virginia museum. they send me around the state to story tell. all these beautiful places in virginia have stories behind them. a lot of public really enjoys hearing the back story. they love the pictures, but they want to know -- there's no ch e closure until they get the back story. i started to do it for the museum and started to tell professional story telling on my own. that started in libraries. it escalated to theaters. now i do those at the abandoned

places themselves. i had approached the owner about that. told him i could protect him legally, make him so money to go into his foundation and allow the public to come back and enjoy these. he allowed me to do that and it's blossomed here and other places. this is by far the most spectacular. any questions? you guys have until 4:00. yeah? >> why are you attracted to abandoned and decaying places? >> two reasons. i love the texture, i love the mood, i love the mystery. that's from a photographic perspective. i'm also a type a personality. to me the challenge of going into the community, walking indoors, going to fire stations, hanging out in diners, loitering

at gas stations all in the spirit of peopling fellow virginians to me is enjoyable. i absolutely love it. what started as a simple hobby to grow an instagram following has graduated into a strong devotion to allowing virginians to develop a deeper appreciation of their past through experiences like this. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ since the early 1980s artist wendy allen has made use of a variety of art styles to paint over 400 portraits of abraham lincoln, next on american history tv, using music, photographs and videos wendy allen explains her reasons tofor